The big story
Indian fintech Slice seals bank merger
Slice has completed its merger with North East Small Finance Bank, marking a rare instance of a startup successfully entering India's tightly regulated banking sector. The merger transforms Slice into a banking entity following months of regulatory scrutiny — and gives the startup access to capital at lower cost and direct control over its lending operations.

From a letter addressed to customers, Slice shall maintain its previous digital payment and lending services but now shall offer saving accounts as well as investment products into the traditional banking category.

Week analysis
It's your turn this time. We are publishing this newsletter a day after our Fintech Stage at our Disrupt conference, smack dab in the middle of that three-day, action-packed extravaganza. Catch the Disrupt Stage programming or catch up on everything happening at the event on our livestream or read our live blog.

If you want the whole download on the highlights and greatest takeaways from our Fintech Stage, stay tuned for next week, but in the meanwhile get a look at your choices of recordings of panels of most interest to you and scan at your leisure the industry insight

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Dollars and cents
Finix raised $75 million in its biggest push yet against the Stripe competitor. Finix CEO and founder Richie Serna was quoted by TechCrunch that being a payment processor was "hugely transformational" for the business and is one of the drivers of the fundraise. Finix quadrupled revenues in the last year, still has much work to be done to challenge Stripe's customer base.

Upflow is a startup that initially specialized in managing outstanding invoices. However, the company is now announcing a shift in its strategy to become a B2B payment platform with its own payment gateway to complement its accounts receivable automation solution.

Remote, the HR platform for managing geographically distributed teams, is doubling down on its focus on managing equity compensation with a new product: Remote Equity. Companies using Carta to manage their cap table can now draft and issue option grants in Carta and include international employees.

SoLo Funds is in the dock over a class action lawsuit. Bloomberg cites a complaint, where SoLo Funds allegedly mislead consumers by marketing zero-interest fees on loans but inciting "tip fees" and "donation fees" to obtain said loans. Complaints state these are tricky fees hard to opt out of, thus the loans seem to be much costlier than borrowers would have otherwise anticipated.