Seth Rogen's Houseplant Bypasses Shopify's Cannabis Payment Ban, Competitor Question Why 🇨🇦
We're also covering Moniepoint $90M round 🇳🇬, Wealthsimple hitting $100B 🇨🇦, Trump pardoning Binance's CZ 🇺🇸, Aspiration founder's celeb fraud 🇺🇸 & Klarna suing Google for $8.3B 🇸🇪
Hey Global Fintechers!
As you might have noticed, this is the first issue of Global Fintech Insider that has a sponsor. That does not mean that the content of the newsletter itself is promotional.
Quite the contrary. Sponsors like OGMA Risk & Analytics are allowing a small media organization like GFI to become sustainable and keep its editorial independence.
The only thing that is actually promotional in this newsletter is the little blurb presenting our sponsor, which starts with the word “SPONSORED” to avoid any possible confusion and the banner on top.
After realizing that less people than I thought were willing to pay for fintech news, I decided to start monetizing GFI through consulting, services like our LinkedIn Growth Engine & Reddit Growth Engine and sponsorships.
And so far, it looks like I made the right choice.
Thanks for reading GFI every week!
🇨🇦 Cannabis Brand Founder Questions Why Shopify Bans Weed Payments… Except for Seth Rogen’s Company
Co-founder of Canadian lifestyle brand Another Room, Chloe Popove has called out e-commerce giant Shopify, seemingly giving preferential treatment to celebrity-backed cannabis brands.
In a LinkedIn post, Popove said her company, like other cannabis merchants, is forced to pay a 2% fee to be allowed to use a third-party payment processor. Yet, Shopify bars them from using its in-house payments platform, Shop Pay.
That rule, however, didn’t seem to apply to Houseplant, the cannabis brand co-founded by Seth Rogen (center), Michael Mohr (left), and Evan Goldberg (right), which recently opened its first-ever pop-up at Shopify’s New York office and use Shop Pay on its website.
“I like Seth Rogen as much as anyone. And if humour unlocks Shop Pay, I’ll start workshopping a tight five,” she wrote in the post. Shopify had previously featured Seth Rogen’s Houseplant on their blog as an example of a “creator archetype” powering the creator economy.
Source: Global Fintech Insider
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Because in a fast-moving market, managing risk shouldn’t slow your growth: it should drive it.
🇳🇬 African Neobank Moniepoint Raise Another $90M From Visa & Google
Nigerian neobank Moniepoint has raised $90 million in fresh funding to fuel its growth in its home market of Nigeria and expand to 4 other undisclosed African countries.
With over 10 millions customers, Moniepoint is one of the most valuable fintech in Africa, where it operates as digital retail bank as well as a payment processor for retailers. While it only operates online for now, Moniepoint applied last year for a full banking license from Nigeria’s central bank, which would allow the fintech to open physical branches in Nigeria.
Moniepoint’s senior VP Ross Strike (left) told Bloomberg in an interview that the round maintain the company’s valuation of over $1 billion and lifts its latest funding round, whose first closing happened last year, to $200 million.
Founded in 2015 by Tosin Eniolorunda (right) in Lagos, Moniepoint now processes over $250 billion in transactions annually. The round was backed by Visa, Development Partners International, Leapfrog, and Google’s Africa Investment Fund.
Sources: Bloomberg, Crowdfund Insider & TechCabal
🇨🇦 Canada’s Wealthsimple Doubles Its Assets to $100B in Just One Year
Canadian online financial services provider Wealthsimple doubled its assets to $100 billion in a single year. CEO Michael Katchen said he did not expect to hit the milestone until December 2028.
“It took 10 years to get to $50 billion. We doubled that in a single year,” said Katchen at an event in Toronto on October 22, according to The Globe and Mail. The figure marks a sharp rise from $52 billion a year ago and $31 billion at the end of 2023.
The surge reflects a broader trend of more Canadians taking ownership of their own savings and retirement, driven by younger demographics, social media financial influencers, and a booming stock market.
According to financial research firm Investor Economics, more than 2.9 million new trading accounts were opened across Canada in the 12 months ending June 2025.
Founded in 2014 as a robo-advisor, Wealthsimple currently serves about three million clients and has since expanded into stocks and crypto trading, credit cards, loans, tax filings, and mortgages.
Source: The Globe and Mail
🇺🇸 Trump Pardons Binance Founder CZ, Critics Ask: Is SBF Next?
US President Donald Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of crypto platform Binance, erasing his money-laundering conviction.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who confirmed the pardon, said the move signals the end of the Biden-era “war on crypto,’’ as reported by The New York Times. The pardon could allow Zhao to regain control of Binance and re-enter the US market, reigniting competition with crypto platforms such as Coinbase and Kraken.
“Deeply grateful for today’s pardon,” Zhao wrote on X, pledging to help “make America the Capital of Crypto.”
The pardon follows Zhao’s outreach to Trump-aligned lawyers and lobbyists, as well as Binance’s partnership with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture.
Financial crime expert Jim Richards, who predicted the pardon in an April op-ed, said he disagreed with framing the conviction as anti-crypto. “It was a war against terrorism, cybercrime, and child abusers,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Former Federal Reserve and Treasury official Donald F. Billings wrote a pointed remark on the same LinkedIn thread, stating, “Next up: SBF? How many Trump sh!tcoins do you have to buy for a pardon? Just a hypothetical question, of course,” referencing FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of fraud in 2023.
Zhao, known as CZ, pleaded guilty in 2023 to failing to implement anti-money-laundering controls at Binance, which prosecutors said enabled transactions tied to sanctioned countries and terrorist groups. He served four months in prison.
Sources: New York Times & Global Fintech Insider
🇺🇸 Founder of Green Neobank Aspiration Pleads Guilty to Defrauding Leonardo DiCaprio, Drake, Orlando Bloom and Robert Downey Jr.
Co-founder of the now-defunct US green banking startup Aspiration, Joseph Sanberg has pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud over a $248 million investor scheme.
The 46-year-old entrepreneur attracted many celebrity backers, including former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and many fintech celebrity investors that made it into GFI’s top 40 such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, Robert Downey Jr., and Drake. Sentencing for Joseph Sanberg, who faces up to 40 years in prison, is set for February 23, 2026.
Prosecutors said Sanberg fabricated financial statements to make Aspiration appear solvent, including a fake audit letter claiming it held $250 million in cash when it had less than $1 million. The false figures were used to secure loans and new investors.
Once a darling of sustainable finance, Aspiration planned a $2.3 billion SPAC in 2021 before collapsing a year later. Its fintech arm was acquired by Mission Financial Partners in 2024, led by ex-Tesla executive Tim Newell, and rebranded as GreenFi, which continues to offer climate-focused banking and investment products.
Sources: Business Insider & Global Fintech Insider
🇷🇺 Moscow Firm Bets on Smart ATMs to Tap 1,000 Tons of Russia’s Private Bullion
Moscow-based gold trading startup Goldexrobot is betting on AI-powered ATMs to turn the nation’s purported 1,000 metric tons of private gold hoard into cash.
They intend to deploy these machines that buy and verify bullion directly from citizens.
Co-founder Evgeny Gorodilov said the machines solve a longstanding trust problem with pawnshops and online trading. “We’re using AI to make valuation transparent and eliminate fraud,” he told Reuters in an interview.
The company is planning 600 machines that use spectral and density analysis to verify gold and price it in real-time using Moscow Exchange data. Users authenticate themselves, deposit jewellery or coins, and receive instant payment to their bank cards.
Regulators approved the technology after trials in the Central Bank’s sandbox, but uptake remains slow as many Russians still view gold as a desirable hedge against inflation and sanctions.
Source: Reuters
🇸🇪 Klarna vs Google $8.3B Antitrust Trial Kicks Off in Sweden
Swedish BNPL giant Klarna’s $8.3 billion lawsuit against Google for anti-competitive manipulation of search results kicked off in Stockholm on October 20.
The Swedish fintech giant and its UK-based shopping price comparison arm, PriceRunner, accuse Google of abusing its market dominance by prioritising its own shopping service in search results, a practice first flagged by the European Commission in 2017 and confirmed by the EU’s top court in 2024.
Klarna spokesman John Craske told AFP in an email reply that the company is seeking the billions in damages based on economic analysis of losses incurred, adding that the amount “continues to grow daily.”
Google denies wrongdoing, saying it has already complied with the EU ruling. The trial at Sweden’s Patent and Market Court is expected to continue until December 19.
Source: AFP
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Who Am I?
Hi, my name is Julien Brault.
From 2017 to 2024, I was the CEO of Hardbacon, a fintech I co-founded, which reached 400,000 unique visitors at its peak.
A Google update ultimately sealed the company’s fate, and I started this newsletter to keep myself busy in the aftermath.
I then launched an another fintech affiliate site called MooseMoney, but I still find the time to publish this newsletter weekly.
Why share this?
Because my goal is to use my experience as an economic journalist, fintech entrepreneur and product manager to present the most essential fintech news from around the world through the eyes of an insider.
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