Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

If you thought banks hiking fixed deposit rates was the silver lining in all this rate hike gloom, Anand has a reality check for you. 

And Arundhati has a reality check for Indian fintechs like Slice and Paytm*, who have made some important product decisions these last few weeks. But these aren’t merely features, and the product decisions affect the one thing that fintechs have the least of, as it is. 

And no, we aren’t talking about profits.

Trust—the ultimate casualty of the fintech winter

The kinds of features that a company rolls out or rolls back say a lot about its priorities, and the context under which it is operating. 

Here are two examples. 

First, darling of the fintech lending world—Slice. A company that shot to fame with its easy-to-apply, easy-to-use credit card-like product which allows people to split their payments into three interest-free monthly instalments. A credit card challenger; cleverly named to effectively communicate the nature of its star feature—slicing up due payments into more easily payable instalments.