The ongoing data breach at Evolve Bank continues to create turmoil in the fintech sector, affecting several startups. Yieldstreet recently confirmed that some of its customers were impacted. Meanwhile, Jason Mikula, the author of Fintech Business Weekly, reported receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the bank, instructing him not to share files from the dark web with any allegedly affected fintech companies. Mikula stated, “As I understand it, some fintechs hadn’t gotten ‘confirmation’ from Evolve about what had been breached and thus hadn’t acted to mitigate risk or inform users.”
In response to the crisis, a group of senators has urged Synapse’s owners and fintech and bank partners, including Evolve, to “immediately restore customers’ access to their money.” They also held partners and investors, such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), accountable for the missing customer funds.
Adding to the complications, a new dispute has arisen between fintech intermediary Synapse and its database provider, MongoDB. This conflict is hindering efforts by independent advisers to return money to millions of customers using apps like Juno and Yotta, who have been unable to access their funds for weeks, according to Bloomberg.