Two new exchange-traded funds have launched with an unusual exclusion criteria: any company founded, led, or controlled by Elon Musk. That rules out Tesla, SpaceX, and other Musk-affiliated ventures, marking a novel approach to values-based portfolio construction.
For payment service providers and card-not-present merchants, this signals a broader trend worth watching. As consumer sentiment increasingly influences investment flows, merchants in high-risk and controversial verticals—iGaming, crypto on-ramps, forex—face parallel dynamics. Just as these ETFs let investors align capital with personal values, acquirers and PSPs must offer merchants the flexibility to route transactions through processors and banking partners that match their risk appetite and regulatory posture. At Velocity, we've built infrastructure around that principle: multi-acquirer orchestration, 40+ alternative payment methods, USDT settlement, and Flash AI routing let merchants optimize not just for approval rates, but for alignment with partner banks and processors that understand their vertical. Exclusion and inclusion criteria aren't just for asset managers anymore—they're embedded in the rails that move money.
Read the full report at TechCrunch Fintech.