I have no issues with financial things per se - I have built several financial systems (from crypto to funds management) with Datomic and Clojure myself.
And this is also one of the reasons I think having sole bank as your owner is a really really bad thing.
Say more? Would be helpful for others to further articulate your observations and opinions. No one has all the answers. For all who have a stake a full diversity of views is best.
I'll be really short: the bank lends money in Brazilian real to credit card holders and, in addition, keeps half of that in financial derivatives. The last real slide (3x in value) was in 2011-2016.
Current world situation is.. interesting, to say at least, and 1 billion of VC money are not charity.
Are their financial reports available and published in English? Would be interesting to read.
I don't know details of their financial model, but will say:
* there is a long bootstrap process for a bank that involves being selective with what customers they can serve with what products at what margins in what order
* debt is a hard game, though in many niches now is the best of times
* currency is also a hard game
* in general, banks are valued at a small multiple of assets and do not attract VC
* in general, SAAS businesses are valued at a large multiple of revenue and do attract VC
So my assumption would be that they are using equity to build the ability to get into the banking core business as a SAAS, which is both lucrative and exploding as an opportunity (see recent nCino news). If they succeed, that's an extremely durable business, and not a bad place for Clojure to be. There are a number of languages that still only "exist" because they form the basis of a banking core.
And this is also one of the reasons I think having sole bank as your owner is a really really bad thing.