In partnership with

Hi fintech fam, 💜

This week has been giving boss energy.

I’ve been bouncing between live podcasts (yes, accounting can be sexy when you make the convo about power + money), plotting the AI playbooks we’ll drop at the Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit: AI Edition, and basically refusing to settle for anything less than top-tier vibes when we all meet in San Francisco.

The countdown is real—and I cannot wait to see you there.

But first, today’s lineup:

✨ My convo with Cindy Gallop on why BlockFree might just flip the future of payments.

✨ A female-led fintech securing a monster Series A.

✨ A female founder's exit from last month—ICYMI, I’m stamping it into the Fintech Is Femme history books.

Let’s get into it.

#TRENDING

What’s Up In Fintech

Every Thursday, I bring you the latest fintech news and trends, delivering the key insights that matter most to the industry—and you.

#1 Cindy Gallop’s BlockFree Could Be Fintech’s Next Big Payout

The future of money is inclusive—or at least it should be. Cindy Gallop is making sure of it.

On this week’s Fintech Mavericks, Gallop opened up about building BlockFree, a payments infrastructure company aimed at fixing what traditional fintech rails won’t: access.

If you’ve followed Gallop’s journey, you know why this matters. For 16 years, as founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, she was systematically shut out of the financial system. More than 30 banks, fintechs—you name it—all refused to work with her. Not because her business wasn’t compliant or profitable, but because it was “uncomfortable.”

That bias exposed a truth about fintech that few admit out loud: access isn’t about compliance—it’s about who gatekeepers deem acceptable.

Now, Gallop is flipping that exclusion into opportunity. And investors are already paying attention.

Why BlockFree Is Different

BlockFree isn’t a payments clone. It’s an infrastructure play built for industries that have been boxed out for decades: sextech, cannabis, creator finance, gaming, even international remittances.

What it offers:

• Direct access to payment rails without the constant risk of deplatforming.
  

• Global scalability for so-called “restricted” businesses.
  

• A path to build wealth in industries the legacy system deems too risky.

Gallop says the investor appetite is clear:

“I’ve been very encouraged by the fact that when I talk to investors about BlockFree, they really get it,” she told me. “There’s a very high level of fintech investor interest in this concept.”

The Market Opening

The timing couldn’t be sharper. “Restricted” industries represent billions in untapped transaction volume. Legacy processors have been too slow—and too risk-averse—to touch it.

That leaves BlockFree positioned to build infrastructure that is:

• Compliant but progressive (risk-managed without blanket bans).
  

• Flexible across categories (instead of siloed or single-market).
  

• Global-first instead of U.S.- or EU-only.

And it’s not just a mission play—it’s a payout play.

“The path to exit is very clear,” Gallop said. “When I prove it is possible to take restricted business payments and make payouts safely and securely, a giant fintech or global bank is going to buy BlockFree for a shit ton of money.”

The Female Lens on Scale

What makes BlockFree even more distinct is Gallop’s unapologetic female-lens approach to infrastructure:

“My aim with BlockFree is apps that use human curation to scale the fucking shit out of something,” she said. “When you make it clear it is safe and secure, you can do so much more business. That’s the female lens—and it’s scaring the shit out of people. Because with the female lens, the aim is to make even more money.”

Translation: inclusion isn’t charity. It’s smart business.

Why Now

BlockFree has been 16 years in the making. Gallop has lived the broken system—navigating bans, lobbying regulators, patching together costly workarounds. Now, she’s channeling that experience into infrastructure that turns inclusion into profit.

For investors, that means two things:

1. A massive TAM hiding in plain sight.
   

2. An obvious acquisition target once traction is proven.

If fintech is serious about “serving the underserved,” this is where the rubber meets the road.

As Gallop put it:

“This is going to be absolutely huge. BlockFree is the answer to every founder who’s been told ‘no’ when the answer should have been ‘yes.’”

Cindy Gallop has waited 16 years for this moment. The market is wide open. Investors are circling. And the opportunity has never been bigger.

Hear Cindy break it all down on this week’s Fintech Mavericks, here.

If you’re into conversations that cut through the BC and actually spotlight the founders rewriting fintech, you’ll want to keep up with Fintech Mavericks. Brex has partnered with us to make it happen—check out these special perks for our Mavs community, here.

#2 Casap Raises $25M to Fix the Broken World of Payment Disputes

When you think of fintech’s biggest problems, “payment disputes” might not top the list. But for millions of consumers and the banks that serve them, the system is broken — and Casap just raised $25 million in Series A funding to fix it.

The round, announced by CEO Shanthi Shanmugam, brings Casap’s total funding to $33.5 million and marks the largest venture investment to-date in the payment disputes category, she says.

Forbes also reports the raise came at a $105 million valuation, led by Emergence Capital with Lightspeed, Primary Venture Partners, SoFi, and others participating.

Why Disputes Matter

If you’ve ever had to dispute a charge on your debit or credit card, you know the drill: long waits, endless back-and-forth, and the sinking feeling that nobody’s on your side. In fact, 50,000 consumer complaints tied to card disputes were filed with the CFPB in the last year.

Casap is betting it can change that. Shanmugam, who previously helped Robinhood launch 24/7 customer support after the GameStop saga, has seen firsthand how broken the system is. She and her cofounder, Saisi Peter, built Casap to “reimagine how disputes are resolved” — and the traction suggests it’s working.

• 450%+ ARR growth
  

• Doubled customer base
  

• Fraud losses down 51%
  

• Cost per dispute cut by up to 90%
  

One customer even reported that dispute filers are now sending thank you emails instead of complaints.

Beyond “Chargebacks” — Toward AI Risk Infrastructure

Casap’s bigger play is using AI to fight first-party fraud — cases where legitimate customers dispute real transactions. These schemes cost businesses $100 billion annually, according to fraud-prevention firm Socure, per the Forbes piece. 

Casap is already working on a fraud scoring engine (think: “FICO for first-party fraud”) and expanding into post-transaction risk. As Shanmugam put it, 

“We believe that a decade from now, what’s accepted as a ‘normal’ level of fraud will be a small fraction of what it is today.”

Why This Matters Now

The dispute category is massive, messy, and largely untouched by venture-backed innovation. Banks and fintechs have long treated it as a cost center — but Casap is reframing it as a strategic advantage.

The numbers back it up: fraud cut in half, costs down 90%, and top-tier VCs piling in at a triple-digit valuation. That’s rare traction — in an overlooked corner of fintech with billion-dollar potential.

Shanmugam’s raise is also a reminder: fintech’s future is being built by women tackling the overlooked problems hiding in plain sight. 

#3 Stripe Acquires Orum: Why Stephany Kirkpatrick’s “Time-to-Money” Mission Just Went Global

Last month, Stephany Kirkpatrick, founder & CEO of Orum, announced that her six-year-old startup has officially joined Stripe.

If you’ve ever waited days for a bank transfer to clear, you’ve felt the problem Orum set out to solve. U.S. money movement is painfully slow—on average, four-plus days to move between financial institutions.

For consumers living paycheck-to-paycheck or small businesses managing cash flow, those days can mean make-or-break moments.

Kirkpatrick knew this firsthand. The daughter of an immigrant father who ran a small business, she grew up watching how delayed payments choked operations and opportunities.

That lived experience became her conviction: “On average, it takes four-plus days for money to move. In today’s environment of inflation, high interest rates, and broader macroeconomic uncertainty, slow money movement is particularly crippling,” she wrote on LinkedIn.

Founded in 2019, Orum raised over $80 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures, Accel, and Inspired Capital. The startup built real-time payment solutions designed to orchestrate speed, certainty, and efficiency for businesses moving money.

Now, inside Stripe—a payments behemoth that processed $1.4 trillion in volume last year—Orum’s mission gets jet fuel. Stripe’s scale (1.3% of global GDP flows through its rails) gives Orum’s technology a distribution channel few startups could ever dream of.

Why This Matters

For fintech, this deal is bigger than just an exit. It’s validation that “time-to-money” is not a niche pain point but a global one. And for founders, Kirkpatrick’s story is a masterclass in founder-market fit.

She raised $80 million as a solo founder, powered not just by technical innovation but by storytelling. “It’s not just about proving the business model,” she shared on Fintech Mavericks. “It’s about showing that you are the one to build it.”

She was.

Stripe’s acquisition signals that real-time payments are no longer optional infrastructure—they’re table stakes for the next decade of fintech.

And it’s proof that founder conviction, rooted in lived experience, is still one of the most powerful competitive advantages in the industry.

🎧 Tune into my conversation with Stephany on Fintech Mavericks to hear how she scaled, fundraised, and steered her mission onto the global stage inside Stripe.

_{MARK YOUR CALENDARS}

Join us every Thursday to keep up with fintech events!

_{WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8}

[SAN FRANCISCO] FINTECH IS FEMME LEADERSHIP SUMMIT: AI EDITION

​🚨 AI is reshaping our economy. Fintech is where it gets real.

On October 8, I’m bringing 200 of fintech’s boldest founders, investors, and operators into one room for the Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit: AI Edition — happening during SF Tech Week at The Green Room.

This isn’t a stage full of buzzwords. This is where we cut through the noise and unlock the real strategies to scale, raise, and lead in the age of AI.

Think: tactical frameworks, unfiltered conversations, and founders showing exactly how they’re weaving AI into product, GTM, security, and growth — no fluff, no smoke, no mirrors.

On stage:

✨ Asya Bradley (Stripe) on building at the edge of AI + fintech

✨ Drew Glover (Fiat Growth) on GTM frameworks that actually work

✨ Anna Joo Fee (GoodFin) on what it really takes to build with AI, not hype

PLUS — curated 1:1 networking that actually moves the needle and a founder pitch competition to spotlight the next breakout companies.

This is not your average conference. It’s the room I wish existed when I was figuring out how to grow in a market moving this fast.

⚡️ Only 50 early bird tickets. They’re already going — and once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Be in the room. Or hear about it from everyone else.

_#SPONSORED

51% of employees feel confused at work

Less than half say they can easily find the...

• goals

• strategies

• directives

...their leaders have shared. Worse, only 9% of staff feel tightly aligned with org-wide goals.

We surveyed 1,200+ professionals to see what's going wrong — and how to get it right.

Get the full report

_FINTUNES

🎶 Amaarae - ms60 (feat. Naomi Campbell)

In my ears right now. Shoutout to my social media admin for keeping me updated on fresh beats!

_{LET’S CONNECT}

📰 Share this newsletter with a friend and start growing your network.

🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn for daily insights on leadership.

🤝 Grow your business through content & community by partnering with me.

📣 Promote yourself to 50,000 subscribers by sponsoring this newsletter.

🎤 Host an epic event by booking me as a speaker, moderator, or emcee.

📚 Increase your expertise by ordering your copy of my book, Fintech Feminists: Increasing Inclusion, Redefining Innovation, and Changing the Future for Women Around the World.

⭐️ P.S. If you’ve read Fintech Feminists (or listened to the audiobook!), I’d be so grateful if you could take 30 seconds to leave a review or rating on Amazon here. Your support means the world to me. A million thanks in advance!

That wraps up today’s edition—thanks for reading! Until next week, keep innovating and challenging the status quo. See you Tuesday!

Love,

Nicole 💜