FinTech Rising Weekly: New Tech News Roundup

This week, we round up reports on AI, realtime and crypto payments in the U.S, and Chicago startups making a mark in payments and quantum computing.

AI Makes Software Developers More Productive while Reality Sets in for Enterprises

The current AI value proposition comes down to increasing human productivity, whether to better use our skills or reduce the number of us working. Blockworks Daily reports on a study that shows how AI makes software developers more productive.?"That’s pretty good and, given all the money being thrown at AI research, likely to get a lot better." In "The Effects of Generative AI on High Skilled Work," researchers ran three experiments with 4,867 software developers to show a 26.08% increase in the number of completed tasks using an AI tool. "Notably, less experienced developers showed higher adoption rates and greater productivity gains," the report states.

Meanwhile, “reality sets in for enterprise AI users, reports The Information after its AI conference. "Businesses that rushed to integrate AI into their operations have learned the hard way that using it successfully takes more than just buying access to a model from OpenAI or another provider, enterprise software leaders said. Instead, companies have to consider a range of factors from security and privacy to cost.”

New Payments Technologies Advance in the U.S.

Cryptocurrency payments are the bleeding edge of new payment technology in the U.S., while real-time bank payments form our latest tech. The common element for general usability remains USD. Loop Crypto offers a new service to make “off-ramping” crypto into fiat bank accounts instant. As the company put it, "Get paid on-chain, settle in USD."

For its part, American Banker reports that “FedNow advances toward making realtime payments mainstream.” The FedNow network has moved “beyond?early adopters?to a new phase” as more than 900 banks?and?credit unions offer the government-backed network, up from 450 in February. FedNow is also expected to help FinTech firms solve payments problems, as noted in the item below on Aeropay.

Chicago FinTech Start Ups Move Forward

SpringFour, a FinTech focused on financial health and welfare, has been acquired by C&R Software, announced Rochelle Nawrocki Gorey, founder and CEO of SpringFour. “Since day one, we have known this: people need and deserve access to resources that help them find their way out of financial hardship. . . . And today, we increasingly see a financial services industry that recognizes the value in doing so,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Aeropay, a digital payments company focused on bank-to-bank ACH transfers, received a full profile in the PaymentsDive newsletter.?“Aeropay CEO Daniel Muller has big dreams for ushering in the next era of payments in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen anytime soon,” Lynne Marek writes in her lede to?Aeropay targets pay-by-bank evolution in the US.?The article details the history of the startup and its quest to make low-cost ACH payments more efficient and usable, which may get a push by U.S. realtime payments systems.

Chicago technology is getting its biggest boost these days from quantum computing, especially with the announcement of a “massive quantum campus” on the site of a long-closed steel plant. John Pletz of Crains Chicago Business reports that “Chicago has bet on quantum computing as a job generator. It's already happening.” See profiles on startups working on the computing problems that underly the next technology race with China.

Short-Term Bitcoin and ETH Buyers Lose, Memecoin Investors Gain

It's not all wine and roses with new financial technologies, however. “Short-term Bitcoin buyers are sitting on mounting losses as the price of BTC dips below $54,000. Markets plunged again on Friday after a lackluster August jobs report. ETH is trading 5% lower at $2,250, while SOL slid 4% and DOT dipped 2%, reports The Defiant in its weekly newsletter.? “However, traders holding VISTA, the token from EtherVista, an Ethereum-based memecoin launchpad, are sitting pretty. VISTA surged 40x in just four days following the platform’s launch.

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