Some links on this page are affiliate links: if you buy through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.
The final Fintech Stage program for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 featured seven sessions on crypto investing, Base, neobanks, trade-in payments, global employment, banking-as-a-service and startup innovation. The stage was scheduled for October 28, 2024, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Moscone West in San Francisco, during the wider October 28–30 conference.
Quick overview
- Conference: TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
- Venue: Moscone West, San Francisco
- Conference dates: October 28–30, 2024
- Fintech Stage: October 28, 2024, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
- Final agenda announced: October 3, 2024
- Published sessions: Seven
The four-hour window comes from TechCrunch’s attendee portal. The final-agenda announcement did not publish individual session start times, durations or a detailed run-of-show, so the list below reflects the published agenda order rather than verified stage timings.
Final Fintech Stage agenda
| Session | Participants | Main subject |
|---|---|---|
| Finding the Consensus of Crypto VC | Morgan Beller, NFX; Will Nuelle, Galaxy VC; Haseeb Qureshi, Dragonfly Capital | Crypto venture investing, protocols, exchanges and decentralized applications |
| Coinbase’s Onchain Pivot with Base | Jesse Pollak, Base | Coinbase’s on-chain strategy and Ethereum layer-2 infrastructure |
| How These Neobanks Grew During Challenging Times | Colin Walsh, Varo Bank; Jason Wilk, Dave | Digital-bank growth, competition and the changing consumer-finance market |
| With Tiptop, Postmates Founder Bastian Lehmann Is Hungry for More | Bastian Lehmann, Tiptop | Checkout-based trade-ins, payouts and fraud prevention |
| Future of Work | Corinne Beksha, Check; Marcelo Lebre, Remote; Josh Reeves, Gusto | Global hiring, contracts, payroll and employee mobility |
| BaaS in a Post-Synapse Meltdown World | Itai Damti, Unit; Peter Hazlehurst, Synctera; Sheetal Parikh, Treasury Prime | Banking-as-a-service resilience, compliance and regulatory clarity |
| Visa Everywhere Initiative | Visa | Startup pitches and corporate open innovation |
Session-by-session details
Finding the Consensus of Crypto VC
Morgan Beller of NFX, Will Nuelle of Galaxy VC and Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly Capital were scheduled to discuss what crypto investors agreed on—and where they differed. The session covered venture investing, scaling, protocols, exchanges, decentralized applications, unexpected portfolio developments and potential areas of future opportunity.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
It was framed around the crypto investment environment of late 2024, including the premise in TechCrunch’s announcement that the regulatory landscape was becoming more favorable. That framing should be understood as the event’s context rather than a neutral, independently verified conclusion.
#1 Best Overall
Coinbase’s Onchain Pivot with Base
Jesse Pollak of Base was scheduled for a discussion about Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network. TechCrunch described Base as secure, low-cost and developer-friendly, with a role in supporting Coinbase’s on-chain products and third-party decentralized applications.
The broader subject was Coinbase’s strategic move toward protocols and decentralization. TechCrunch’s event description presented Base as a significant part of that on-chain direction; it did not establish an independently verified ranking of Coinbase’s corporate bets.
How These Neobanks Grew During Challenging Times
Colin Walsh of Varo Bank and Jason Wilk of Dave were scheduled to examine how their digital-finance businesses grew amid difficult macroeconomic conditions, digital-bank failures and stronger competition.
The announcement described both companies as serving millions of customers. That is a claim from the 2024 event promotion, not a current customer-count verification. The discussion’s practical focus was how consumer fintech companies build scale and maintain momentum when funding, trust and competition are all under pressure.
Rank #2
With Tiptop, Postmates Founder Bastian Lehmann Is Hungry for More
Bastian Lehmann, the founder of Postmates and Tiptop, was scheduled to discuss Tiptop’s checkout-based trade-in model. Under the model described by TechCrunch, a retailer can offer Tiptop as a payment option while Tiptop handles quotes, payouts and fraud prevention.
The session also put Lehmann’s return to startups in context after Postmates was sold to Uber for $2.65 billion. Its fintech angle was the integration of trade-in value into checkout rather than treating resale or device recovery as a separate consumer process.
Future of Work
Corinne Beksha of Check, Marcelo Lebre of Remote and Josh Reeves of Gusto were scheduled to discuss the financial and operational infrastructure behind international employment.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsTopics included global hiring, international contracts, payroll, employee mobility and whether global HR platforms can reduce or replace the need for local subsidiaries. The session connected fintech with the compliance and payments problems that arise when companies employ people across multiple jurisdictions.
BaaS in a Post-Synapse Meltdown World
Itai Damti of Unit, Peter Hazlehurst of Synctera and Sheetal Parikh of Treasury Prime were scheduled to examine the banking-as-a-service market after Synapse’s bankruptcy.
The discussion focused on operational resilience, compliance standards, the risks created by interconnected fintech infrastructure and the effects on consumers and fintech companies. The event description also pointed to calls for greater regulatory clarity. References to the impact of the Synapse collapse should be read as the framing used in TechCrunch’s 2024 announcement, not as a broader legal or regulatory finding.
Visa Everywhere Initiative
The Visa Everywhere Initiative was the program’s branded, partner-led segment rather than a conventional independent editorial panel. Visa presented it as an open-innovation program for startups.
TechCrunch said the initiative began in the United States in 2015, later expanded globally and had received applications from nearly 15,000 startups at the time of the 2024 announcement. That figure is historical and reflects the number cited in the event promotion.
How the final agenda differed from the June announcement
The June 26 announcement was explicitly preliminary and contained four announced items:
- Visa Everywhere Initiative
- Finding the Consensus of Crypto VC
- Future of Work
- BaaS in a Post-Synapse Meltdown World
The October 3 final announcement expanded the program to seven sessions by adding:
- Coinbase’s Onchain Pivot with Base
- How These Neobanks Grew During Challenging Times
- With Tiptop, Postmates Founder Bastian Lehmann Is Hungry for More
The final version also filled in or changed participant details. Corinne Beksha of Check was named for Future of Work, replacing the earlier “to be announced” speaker listing. Peter Hazlehurst of Synctera appeared on the final BaaS panel in place of Mitchell Lee. The final announcement also corrected Haseeb Qureshi’s surname, which had been misspelled as “Quereshi” in the preliminary version.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Readers using the June article alone would therefore miss three sessions and would not have the final speaker information.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Recordings available in the TechCrunch archive
TechCrunch’s Disrupt Fintech Stage 2024 archive listed recordings for five sessions:
- Visa Everywhere Initiative: The Ultimate Fintech Pitch Competition
- Post-Synapse meltdown, this is the state of the banking-as-a-service industry
- Postmates founder Bastian Lehmann is hungry for more with Tiptop, a new fintech startup
- How two neobanks grew during challenging times and the future of online banking
- Three venture capitalists try to find the consensus of crypto VC
The archive did not list recordings for Coinbase’s Onchain Pivot with Base or Future of Work. That absence does not prove either session was canceled; it establishes only that those sessions were not represented in the archive listing available for this retrospective.
What the agenda was really about
The program was broader than a standard consumer-fintech track. Its central theme was the infrastructure and distribution of financial services:
- Crypto networks and capital: venture funding, protocols and decentralized applications.
- Blockchain infrastructure: Base and the effort to bring on-chain products to developers and users.
- Consumer banking: neobank growth, customer acquisition and competition.
- Payments and commerce: trade-in financing and checkout integration through Tiptop.
- Employment infrastructure: international hiring, payroll and worker mobility.
- Financial infrastructure providers: the resilience and compliance obligations of BaaS platforms.
- Startup commercialization: Visa’s connection between startups and a large payments network.
That mix made the Fintech Stage useful as a snapshot of how fintech companies were approaching distribution, regulation and infrastructure in late 2024—not simply as a list of banking-app talks.
Bottom line
The final Fintech Stage agenda at Disrupt 2024 contained seven published sessions and was scheduled for a four-hour block on October 28 at Moscone West. Compared with the preliminary June agenda, the final program added sessions on Base, neobanks and Tiptop, while refining several speaker listings. Five sessions appear in TechCrunch’s video archive, but the archive should not be treated as a complete record of all seven announced sessions.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
