The best fintech stories of 2022

Here are the stories that garnered the most interest from readers

Mary Ann Azevedo 23 hours

Welcome to The Interchange! If you received it in your inbox, thank you for subscribing and for your vote of confidence. If you read this as a message on our site, subscribe here so that you can receive it directly in the future. Each week, I'll take a look at the hottest fintech news from the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds and trends to analysis of a particular space and hot shots on a particular company or phenomenon. There's a lot of fintech news out there and it's my job to stay in the loop - and make sense - so you can stay in the know. — Marie Anne

As this year draws to a close, it's obviously a good time to look back at some of the highlights (and lowlights) in the world of fintech news.

We started 2022 on a relatively high note. Mega rounds were still happening! The decacorns were born. Venture capital was still readily available. Then during the second quarter, things changed. And they've been running ever since.

When deciding how to approach the last edition of this newsletter for the year, I was curious to know which of my stories performed best. So I asked our amazing audience development manager, Alyssa Stringer, to pull my top 15 stories based on pageviews. In summary, dear readers, it seems that you were all more interested in covering companies at their peak and covering companies at their lowest. It was the best moment. And then it felt like the worst of times. And oh, many of you were curiously very curious about the concept of fractional real estate investing.

Here are my 15 most read TechCrunch articles of 2022:

"We probably fucked up $200 million," Better.com CEO told employees at layoff meeting: A collaboration with the brilliant Zack Whittaker, where we got to hear for ourselves Vishal Garg address employees. . . and it was not pretty. Fast Shuts Down After Slow Growth, High Consumption Prevented Fundraising Options: A Collaboration With My Dear Friend, TC+ Editor and Equity Podcast Co-Host Alex Wilhelm. Watching one-click payment startup Fast crash and burn has definitely been one of the biggest stories in fintech this year. Ramp Confirms New Valuation of $8.1 Billion After "Nearly 10x Increase" in YOY Revenue: The Business Expense Startup Doubled its Valuation from August 2021 to March 2022. Space in which it operates has only become encumbered. During this time, the company has since expanded into new business areas. Fintech roundup: Better.com employees leave in "crowds" following the return of CEO Vishal Garg: this one is particularly meaningful to me, as it was the soft launch of what was to come become The Interchange. Also, one of the many scoops related to Better.com. PayPal Closing Its San Francisco Office: This One Surprised Me A Bit As It Didn't Seem To Be This Major News, But Maybe It Was A Sign Of This which was going to arrive later in 2022. Forerunner, Bezos back Arrived, a startup that lets you buy single-family rentals for “as low as $100”: This is almost related to the PayPal piece above. It got a lot of interest – maybe it was a combination of the very compelling business model and the fact that Jeff Bezos was a backer.