What will happen to fintech and crypto in 2026?

How could I write a series of 2026 predictions without a specific focus on fintech and cryptocurrencies? The headlines are that:

• Systems Become Proactive: Technology shifts from reacting to events to anticipating needs
• AI Becomes Invisible Infrastructure: Intelligence moves from tools to embedded decision-making
• Digital Layers Disappear into Daily Life: Identity, security, payments, and compliance become seamless
• Trust Becomes the Competitive Advantage: Resilience, governance, and security outweigh speed alone
• 2026 Is the Consolidation Year: Experimentation gives way to fewer, stronger, integrated platforms

WARNING: TL;DR

As we enter 2026, I got a whole load of fintech prediction reports looking ahead.

If I were to summarise all of these reports, then the key trends are pointing to a world defined less by individual products and more by systemic shifts in how economies, institutions, and people interact with technology.

At the core is a transition from reactive, siloed systems to proactive, integrated ones. AI—especially agentic and conversational AI—is expected to reshape decision-making, commerce, customer experience, fraud prevention, and personalisation across industries. Systems increasingly anticipate needs rather than respond to requests.

Digital infrastructure becomes foundational. Real-time processes, embedded services, interoperable platforms, and digital identity frameworks move from innovation to expectation. Payments, identity, compliance, and security are no longer standalone functions but invisible layers built into everyday experiences.

Regulation matures but fragments globally. While some regions provide clearer rules that enable innovation, others remain uncertain, forcing organisations to adapt quickly across jurisdictions. The winners will be those that treat regulation as an enabler of trust and scale rather than a constraint.

Trust, resilience, and security rise in importance. As AI, automation, and digitisation accelerate, new risks emerge—deepfakes, cyber threats, and systemic vulnerabilities—driving investment in advanced security, governance, and quantum-resistant technologies.

Convergence accelerates. Traditional institutions, technology firms, and new entrants increasingly overlap in roles, offerings, and capabilities. Consolidation follows experimentation, with fewer but stronger platforms dominating.

Overall, 2026 is framed as a threshold year: the point where long-running trends—AI, digitisation, embedded services, and regulatory clarity—coalesce into durable operating models. Organisations that balance innovation with trust, scale with governance, and automation with human oversight are best positioned for the next decade.

Anyways, if you want to delve deeper, here are a bunch of reports you can read starting with Finovate, the conference I’ve attended many times over the past 15 years. Their 2026 report summarises the year ahead nicely:

Fintech is entering 2026 at a pivotal moment of both convergence and divergence. Emerging technologies such as agentic AI, stablecoins, and embedded finance are advancing alongside increasingly fragmented global regulation.

Their paper Fintech at the Crossroads then explores a number of key trends including:

1. Divergences in Global Regulatory Strategies
2. Open Banking and Open Finance in a Post-1033 World*
3. Embedded Finance Expands Beyond Payments
4. Wealthtech: Beyond Robo-Advisors
5. Agentic AI Powers Financial Personalisation
6. Agentic AI Fuels the Next Era of Commerce
7. Conversational AI Redefines Customer Experience
8. Stablecoins Drive Payment Interoperability
9. Tokenized Deposits and Digital Assets Rise
10. New Fraud Threats Bring New Challenges

They conclude that the 2026 financial services landscape will be characterised by agentic AI, digital assets like stablecoins, and significantly divergent regulatory environments. Agentic AI is transforming commerce, wealth management, customer service, and more through proactive, personalised experiences that anticipate rather than react to user needs.

Stablecoins and tokenized deposits are closing the gap between decentralised and traditional finance. Embedded finance is making it increasingly possible—and profitable—for non-financial companies to expand into payments, investing, lending, and more.

Regulatory environments vary significantly, with the US demonstrating clarity in some areas while facing uncertainty in others. Meanwhile, in places like Europe—and even Asia and MENA—more progressive regulators have provided greater clarity on the rules of the road. This is compelling institutions—and the fintech innovators seeking to serve them—to scramble to keep up.

The defining shift moving into 2026 is the transition from reactive and fragmented systems toward proactive and integrated experiences. Firms that successfully balance innovation with compliance, AI advancement with customer security and trust, and who view regulatory frameworks as empowering rather than obstructing, stand to gain the most from these emerging trends.

You can read the full report below or download it here.

Fintech Magazine also have ten key fintech trends for 2026 as follows:

Real-Time Payments Become the Global Standard

Key facts:

• US$60tn - 2025 total value of instant payments transactions (Juniper Research)
• The UK's Faster Payments Service processed 5.9 billion transactions in 2024 (Pay.UK)

Fintech Consolidation Accelerates

Key facts:

• Global fintech funding fell by 12% in 2024 (GFTN, Global State of Fintech 2024)
• 33 of 70 of the largest fintechs were profitable in 2023 (BCG and QED Investors, Global Fintech: Prudence, Profits, and Growth)
• 150 fintech acquisitions by traditional banks from 2014 – 2024 (BNP Paribas, Fintech acquisitions by traditional banks: review of the decade 2014-2024)

Central Bank Digital Currencies Gain Traction

Key facts:

• Over 130 countries are exploring CBDCs (Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker, October 2024)
• The Bank of England's digital pound consultation received 50,000 responses (Bank of England Consultation Response 2023)
• Digital yuan (e-CNY) is still the largest CBDC pilot in the world (Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker)

Sustainability in Fintech Surges

Key facts:

• US$4.9bn ~ was recorded in net global sustainable open-end and exchange-traded funds in Q2 2025. (Morningstar Direct, Global Sustainable Fund Flows Data, 2025)
• EU regulations require mandatory climate risk disclosures for financial institutions from 2024 (EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive)
• £632m was invested in UK-based green fintechs in 2024 (CGFI Green Fintech 2.0 Report)

Quantum-Resistant Cryptography Becomes Essential

Key facts:

• NIST released first post-quantum cryptographic standards, mandating financial sector adoption (National Institute of Standards and Technology, August 2024)
• US$1bn expected revenue from quantum cryptography earning (McKinsey Quantum Technology Report 2024)
• US$219.2bn - global quantum cryptography market size value in 2024 (IDC Quantum Computing Forecast 2024)

Crypto Regulation Matures Globally

Key facts:

• The EU’s MiCA regulation became fully applicable in 2024 (European Securities and Markets Authority, 2024)
• UK government committed to making Britain a global crypto hub (HM Treasury Cryptoasset Policy Framework 2024)
• Global crypto market capitalisation exceeded £2tn (US$2.6tn) (CoinMarketCap, October 2024)

Open Banking Expands to Open Finance

Key facts:

• UK open banking now has 10 million active users (Open Banking Implementation Entity Data Report 2024)
• The FCA's open finance roadmap aims to be published in 2026 (Financial Conduct Authority, Open Finance Strategic Plan 2024)
• 14 billion calls processed annually by open banking APIs (Open Banking Limited, Annual Statistics 2024)

Global Stablecoin Adoption

Key facts:

• Stablecoins have processed over US$8.9t in the first half of 2025 (Rise, 2025 Stablecoin Statistics from 2025)
• US$18tn - Transfer volume for stablecoin, exceeding Visa and Mastercard (Artemis Analytics)
• The stablecoin market could be worth US$500 – 750bn in coming years (JP Morgan, 2025)

AI-Powered Hyper-Personalisation Transforms Banking

Key facts:

• AI in fintech market projected to reach US$41.16bn by 2030 (Grand View Research, AI in Fintech Report 2024)
• 75% of firms already utilise AI (Bank of England, Artificial intelligence in the UK financial services 2024).
• Over the last year, 74% of organisations surveyed have invested in AI and GenAI (Deloitte’s 2025 Tech Value Survey

Embedded Finance Becomes Commonplace

Key facts:

• Embedded finance market size is forecast to reach US$7.2tn by 2030 (Dealroom Talks: the rise of embedded finance)
• Revenue from Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platforms is projected to increase by 158% by 2028. (Juniper Research, 2024)
• The BaaS market is projected to achieve a global valuation of US$22.6bn by 2032. (Allied Market Research, Banking-as-a-service Market by Component)

You start to get a theme around crypto being universally accepted and regulated and finance being embedded in everything, added to which it is all open.

Then Backbase surveyed a group of experts - not me, for some reason - and came up with their ten big themes for 2026, namely:

The AI-powered bank: from pilots to productivity

In 2026, payments will become fully embedded, invisible, and intelligent. Orchestration across cards, accounts, wallets, and digital currencies — plus instant settlement and programmable rails — will create new revenue at the moment of payment and set a new standard for reliability and transparency.

The new frontier in banking fraud: trust in the age of deepfakes

Trust will emerge as the defining competitive edge of 2026. By unifying detection, decisioning, and case management — and layering continuous verification and content-authenticity checks — banks will cut losses, boost confidence, and turn safety into a growth advantage

The invisible payments economy: frictionless, borderless, and instant

Open banking will evolve into open finance in 2026, creating a revenue engine for many financial institutions. Banks that productise APIs, monetise data, and embed services in partner ecosystems will shift from considering compliance costs to compounding distribution and realizing ecosystem-led growth.

The open finance acceleration: from regulation to real revenue

In 2026, incumbents will face their toughest competitive test yet, but they’re far from out of the game. Those that unify their data and channels into a single, AI-powered platform will match digital natives on speed and surpass them on trust, governance, and accountable personalisation.

The race for relevance: reinventing the bank’s role

In 2026, incumbents will face their toughest competitive test yet, but they’re far from out of the game. Those that unify their data and channels into a single, AI-powered platform will match digital natives on speed and surpass them on trust, governance, and accountable personalisation.

Retail banking: proactively personal, AI-powered,

By 2026, retail banking will quietly run in the background of everyday life. AI co-pilots will do everything from anticipating needs to automating money movement and elevating financial wellness, all while data-and-payments orchestration turns personalisation into primacy and durable loyalty.

Private banking: augmented relationships and intelligent advisory

In 2026, private banking will be defined by AI-augmented relationships and intelligent advisory. AI copilots will enable relationship managers to raise the minimum baseline of service for every client, while explainable, data-rich advice drives retention, share of wallet, and trust at scale.

Wealth management: hyper-automation

In 2026, wealth firms will fuse hyper-automation with human advice to scale white-glove experiences. Advisors will focus on life goals and strategy as AI handles prep, analysis, and next-best actions, paired with seamless onboarding and values-aligned portfolios for mass-affluent growth.

Small business banking: relationship

In 2026, SMB banking will be redefined, with speed, precision, and ecosystems-based intelligence as the baseline. Agentic collaboration, instant KYC, embedded finance, and dynamic credit inside the tools businesses already use will deliver context-aware service, faster working-capital decisions, and reliable growth.

Commercial banking: predictive, modular, and growth-driven

2026 will mark the rise of the intelligent commercial bank: faster, more modular, and fully growth-oriented. API-led treasury, agentic operations, and AI-centric risk, running on composable architecture with ESG-linked offerings, will turn banks into orchestration platforms for real-time liquidity and enterprise value.

It is all about agentic AI it seems. You can download their report here.

Meanwhile, moving on from AI, let's talk about Open Banking. Helen Child OBE (Open Banking Excellence) has made a couple of 2026 forecasts around:

Smart Data - Building Trust and Defences to Scale

The Smart Data ecosystem is at a pivotal moment. With the passage of the Data Use and Access Act (2025), the UK government has laid the groundwork for a truly data-driven economy - evolving from Open Banking to Open Finance and beyond. Yet as opportunity accelerates, our defences lag our ambitions. Smart Data can only thrive if consumers trust it. This means building security, resilience, and accountability into the ecosystem from day one. We must protect customers, not retrospectively but pre-emptively - closing the stable door before the horse bolts. The next phase of Open Finance will only scale if it is safe. That’s why we believe in 2026 we will see more focus on third-party risk protections and more work to expand ecosystem security through greater cross-industry collaboration.

AI and Open Finance - From Insight to Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence will become the engine driving the next chapter of Open Finance.
2026 will see AI move beyond analytics to autonomous financial intelligence - interpreting real-time financial data to predict, prevent, and personalise. AI will:

• Detect and deter fraud faster than humans ever could. As a result, we expect to see enhanced transaction monitoring tools, increased detection accuracy and reduced false-positive incidents.
• Anticipate consumer needs and offer hyper-personalised financial guidance.Banks at the forefront of this trend will be able to offer personalisation at scale, giving retail customers the same level of service as private banking clients.
• Empower regulators and policymakers with real-time market insight.This will help regulators stay ahead of market trends and enable policymakers to better balance customer protections with innovation.

Meanwhile, Bob's Guide has made five key forecasts for this year:

1. Autonomous Finance Becomes a Consumer Reality

The agentic AI systems refined in 2025 will move from the back office to the front line, giving rise to Agentic Commerce. This prediction is built on the fact that Visa and Mastercard are expected to roll out standardised frameworks to support AI-driven transactions, meaning consumers’ AI agents will be empowered to browse, select, and transact on their behalf in real-time.

In 2026, a customer won’t just ask an AI to suggest a better insurance plan; the AI will be authorised to find, purchase, and integrate that plan based on real-time data from their spending, investment, and insurance accounts. The challenge for fintechs will be securing these autonomous transactions through “AI-native payments” that require advanced agent verification and real-time consent flows.

2. The Cost of Non-Compliance Will Outweigh the Cost of Modernisation

With the regulatory blueprints established in 2025 (MiCA, AI Act, DORA), 2026 will be the year of enforcement. Compliance will no longer be viewed as a cost center but as a competitive differentiator.

Firms that procrastinated on core banking modernisation will face a crippling reality: their legacy systems cannot handle the real-time, granular data requirements necessary to prove compliance with AI governance rules or DORA’s operational resilience mandates. This will force an accelerated migration to modular, cloud-native cores that support faster data processing and regulatory reporting. The financial penalties and reputational damage from non-compliance with the EU’s high-risk AI system obligations (hitting August 2026) will create a powerful financial imperative for transformation.

3. Tokenized Real-World Assets (RWAs) Define the New Asset Standard

Tokenization, which proved its utility in institutional payments in 2025, will broaden in 2026 to become the default digital standard for a wide range of tangible and intangible assets. We will see tokenized RWAs (ranging from real estate and corporate bonds to carbon credits) move from proof-of-concept to pilot-scale commercial products.

Standard Chartered’s projection of a multi-trillion-dollar tokenized asset market will start to materialise. This will push major financial institutions to rapidly develop secure custody solutions and smart contract controls to manage these new digital instruments, creating a boom for compliant, institutional-grade DLT infrastructure.

4. Embedded Finance Evolves into “Orchestrated Ecosystems”

Embedded finance, which succeeded by offering single features (like a payment or a loan), will mature into complex, multi-layered embedded ecosystems in 2026. This shift means non-financial platforms will move beyond simply offering a single bank service to orchestrating a complete financial journey for their customers.

For a B2B SaaS platform, this could mean embedding not just payment processing, but also insurance tailored to specific transactions, automated cash flow management, and dynamic lines of credit, all sourced from an array of Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) and RegTech partners. The complexity will shift from building the feature to seamlessly managing the multiple providers and regulatory requirements behind the scenes.

5. Regulatory Fragmentation Increases Cross-Border Friction

While the EU focuses on harmonisation, 2026 will see a broader global trend of regulatory localisation. Driven by domestic competitiveness goals and local consumer protection priorities, national regulators in the US, UK, and APAC will continue to write their own specific rules for areas like AI governance, stablecoin licensing, and consumer outcomes.

For global fintechs and cross-border financial institutions, this will mean navigating a highly complex, diverging set of rules. The need to maintain compliance in multiple, hyper-localised jurisdictions will significantly increase the cost of doing business internationally. Success will hinge on operational models that can quickly adapt to diverging standards, turning sophisticated RegTech solutions into a mandatory investment for global players.

Moving onwards and, unsurprisingly, AI and Agentic Commerce appears everywhere. This is corrobarated by Juniper Research who have 10 predictions for fintech in 2026:

1. Stablecoins to Rival Existing Interbank Settlement Layer
2. Agentic Commerce to Reshape B2B & Consumer Purchasing
3. EUDI Wallet to Redefine Digital Identity in Europe
4. Tokenised Assets Will Enter the Mainstream
5. Gen AI to Transform Banking
6. Flexible Credentials Will Drive Payment Card Renaissance
7. AI Fraud Prevention Investment to Rise Amid Deepfake Threats
8. Pay by Bank to Scale in the UK via Commercial VRPs
9. No-code AML Adoption to Extend Beyond Banks
10. Virtual Cards Will Take Off Within Travel Payments

You can read their full report below or download it here.

Then, being more parochial, Slipcase highlight five key trends in European fintech markets:

1. Rising global uncertainty shaping business strategy
2. AI adoption accelerates, but risks loom
3. Stablecoin payments a growing alternative
4. Regulatory oversight means it’s critical to adapt
5. Escalating cyber threats facing the sector

Add to this that my friends at 21shares have summarised the crypto view for 2026. Here are their ten top themes:

Bitcoin’s four year cycle is broken!

Even though market outcomes can differ materially from expectations, Bitcoin could be positioned to reach new all-time highs in 2026, with broader markets potentially benefiting from improving liquidity and rising institutional participation. Each cycle now delivers less exponential returns, but also far milder corrections, reflecting Bitcoin’s evolution. The halving may remain symbolic, but it is no longer the engine.

Global crypto ETPs will surpass $400B

Crypto ETPs have become the dominant gateway to get digital asset exposure. Last year, Shares21 predicted they’d surpass $250B in assets under management (AUM) at its peak, a milestone already briefly hit. This year, we expect this trajectory to accelerate, with global crypto ETPs on track to outpace the largest and most well-known Nasdaq-100 ETF (ticker: QQQ) $400B by the end of 2026.

Stablecoin supply will reach $1 trillion

The trajectory is clear, stablecoins are becoming the connective tissue between TradFi and DeFi, powering everything from onchain treasuries to cross-border commerce. As a result, Share21 believe circulation will reach $1 trillion by the end of 2026, a 3.3x increase from current levels.

Decentralised finance to reach $300 billion in total value locked

Alongside the tokenization of bonds, equities, and money markets, DeFi is converging into a programmable, unified financial system, forming the next layer of global capital markets. By 2026, we project that decentralised finance (DeFi) will exceed $300B in total value locked (TVL), up over 130% from today’s $130B.

Digital asset treasuries to exceed $250 billion in assets, but only a few will survive

We believe many DATs will fail in the long run and the result will be a smaller group of dominant, well-capitalised DATs managing diversified treasuries and bridging traditional capital to the crypto economy. By the end of 2026, these firms are expected to hold more than $250B in crypto assets, up around 130% from roughly $110B at the end of 2025.

Prediction markets will bring millions of users onchain, reaching $100B in yearly traded volume

By 2026, prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi are expected to surpass $100B in annual traded volume, onboarding millions of users as real-world events in geopolitics, sports and beyond are monitored, traded and registered onchain.

The agentic economy comes to life in 2026

If even 1% of global fund assets adopted agentic strategies, that would represent over $1 trillion in AI-managed capital. AI agents are transforming crypto from programmable money to programmable intelligence, unlocking new revenue, efficiency, and growth across the decentralised economy.

Most Ethereum scaling solutions won’t survive 2026

The year ahead is likely to mark Ethereum’s L2 consolidation: a leaner, more resilient layer anchored by ETH-aligned, exchange-backed, and high performance networks. As experimentation gradually gives way to more durable models, Ethereum’s scaling layer may move toward greater efficiency, steadier blob demand, and improved value capture.

In 2026, regulated ICOs become a mainstream capital market

With U.S. access returned, even a 10% recapture of the $30B ICO-era volume would mean roughly $3B in new regulated inflows. The next wave of retail capital formation is arriving this time driven by compliance, structure, and institutional integration rather than speculation alone.

Tokenized assets expected to surpass half a trillion in total value locked

By 2026, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) are projected to exceed $500 billion in total value locked, up from roughly $35B in 2025.

You can download their report here.

And finally, as banks are still important, we could ask the question: What banks should do to be ready for 2026? Luckily Fintech Futures has answered it:

• Build an AI-first architecture: most downstream value depends on having a flexible, secure, and scalable foundation.
• Adopt a human-in-the-loop operating model with data governance and risk controls aligned to regulatory expectations from day one.
• Strengthen interoperability to bridge legacy systems, accelerate integration, and address adoption concerns around compliance and risk.
• Embrace cloud-native deployment to enable consistent security, data governance, and agility across on-prem, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

So, that covers the bases for this year’s big ideas. It is all about AI in 2026. Roll on 2027!

 

* 1033 refers to Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act, a landmark U.S. regulation finalised by the CFPB in late 2024, establishing a national open banking framework that mandates financial institutions share consumer data with authorised third parties (like fintechs) for better control, choice, and easier account switching, though it faces ongoing legal challenges from banks.