CB Insights: Nine Predictions for the Fintech Sector in 2026, with Asset Tokenization Already Becoming a Trend

Powerful forces are converging that will reshape the financial services industry in 2026. Emerging banks are going public and applying for full banking licenses. Native cryptocurrency companies are collaborating with or competing against the world's largest banks. AI agents are beginning to autonomously transfer funds. These developments collectively signal a transformation in how financial services are constructed and the ownership of customer relationships.

Prediction 1: Emerging banks entering new markets will steal consumer deposits from traditional banks

New banks are no longer just startups chasing traditional banks. A new type of digital-first institution is expanding globally, going public, and applying for full banking licenses, directly competing with traditional banks for major consumer banking relationships.

The booming IPO market indicates growing confidence in the business maturity of new banks. Chime completed an $864 million IPO in June 2025, setting a historical high for new bank IPOs in the U.S. PicPay subsequently went public on Nasdaq in January. The largest new bank, Nubank, received conditional approval for a U.S. banking license in January, choosing to apply for a full license independently rather than partnering with a sponsoring bank, and relocating its co-founder full-time to the U.S. to lead this new subsidiary.

In the private sector, CB Insights' hiring momentum scores reveal which B2C new banks are expanding most aggressively.

Revolut leads with a perfect score of 100 in hiring momentum. The company raised $2 billion in November, achieving a valuation of $75 billion, making it the highest-valued private new bank in history, with a significant portion of the funds earmarked for expansion into the U.S. Its hiring strategy demonstrates a systematic market entry approach, such as recruiting senior regulatory and compliance leaders in over 20 countries simultaneously. Other companies include:

• YouTrip (33.6) is aggressively expanding in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly focusing on the Australian market.

• Kuda (31.6), focused on the Nigerian market, is hiring staff across multiple African regions.

• Toss Bank (20.8) is hiring for international remittance and foreign exchange-related positions, marking the company's cross-border expansion from South Korea.

Even new banks that have not yet expanded geographically are changing their models: FairMoney (21.1) is transforming from a digital lending institution into a full-service pan-African bank, while N26 (25.4) is shifting towards AI integration, mortgages, and risk management to deepen its competitive position in existing European markets.

As this generation of new banks enters new markets with increasingly comprehensive services, consumer deposits at banks of all sizes face pressure from a new class of competitors.

Prediction 2: The battle of buy now, pay later banks

"Buy now, pay later" (BNPL) is no longer just a checkout feature. Klarna (expected to be the largest fintech IPO in 2025) and Affirm (with a higher market cap and actively expanding into Europe) are building comprehensive consumer banking services, as indicated by CB Insights' business relationship data, which shows they are achieving this through overlapping infrastructures. These two companies rank among the most active payment companies in terms of the number of partners, with 27 shared partners—including Apple, Adyen, Google, and JPMorgan—integrating BNPL into various aspects from device-based checkout processes to digital commerce and merchant banking and payment processing.

Recent initiatives have further deepened this infrastructure layout. Affirm's partnership with Fiserv and Klarna's expansion into credit card services through Marqeta have integrated BNPL services into debit cards, banking services, and everyday payments, far exceeding the scope of installment loans at checkout. Klarna holds licenses in the EU and the UK and announced in June a pilot launch of debit card services in the U.S. in collaboration with Visa. Meanwhile, Affirm plans to expand its business beyond existing savings accounts (held by Cross River Bank) and has submitted an application to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in January.

Our hiring insights show that Affirm is recruiting leaders focused on analytics to develop its partner bank debit card program. Klarna is enhancing its fraud detection and risk management capabilities by establishing specialized positions, particularly emphasizing regulatory compliance in the UK market.

As intelligent AI reshapes consumer shopping behaviors, the pure buy now, pay later model may lose momentum, with both companies' next phase being comprehensive consumer banking operations.

Prediction 3: Robinhood will become a financial super app

In 2025, equity financing in the wealth tech sector grew by 90% year-on-year, the largest increase among all fintech sub-sectors. The highest-valued company in this sector, Robinhood, is actively expanding its banking, credit, and cryptocurrency infrastructure business.

In investment, Robinhood is moving towards vertical integration. It has acquired Bitstamp (an institutional-grade cryptocurrency trading platform) and LedgerX (a cryptocurrency futures platform), extending its business beyond retail brokerage. Additionally, it has partnered with Offchain Labs to build the L2 chain "Robinhood Chain" specifically for EU users, indicating that Robinhood's ambitions extend beyond asset distribution to owning on-chain market infrastructure.

In banking, Robinhood is continuously expanding its capabilities in preparation for launching comprehensive banking services. In November 2025, Robinhood partnered with GoPuff and Coastal Community Bank to integrate cash delivery services; in September 2025, Robinhood acquired Stakk to further enhance its core banking capabilities. Our hiring data also corroborates this shift, showing an increase in positions directly related to credit cards, banking products, and credit line enhancements:

• Full-stack engineers and software backend engineers for credit card and banking operations

• Banking product design managers and senior product engineers

• Credit business analysts for banking fraud

Robinhood is not merely relying on partnerships to layer functionalities but is building a vertically integrated financial system and talent pool covering trading, cryptocurrency infrastructure, deposits, and credit. As wealth tech flourishes, Robinhood is reshaping consumer banking in the name of brokerage.

Prediction 4: Large cryptocurrency companies will challenge large banks

Cryptocurrency companies are no longer providing alternatives to traditional banking services; they are building the next phase of traditional banking services.

The most actively expanding cryptocurrency-native companies in 2025 are Ripple, Coinbase, and Circle, each establishing over 50 partnerships. According to our business relationship insights report, these three leading companies are targeting the traditional banking system:

• Ripple is building institutional-grade custody infrastructure for real-world asset tokenization and digital fund management, achieving this through white-label solutions supported by well-known financial institutions like BBVA and Absa Group.

• Coinbase is expanding from retail brokerage to provide institutional brokerage, custody, and payment infrastructure services to financial institutions like JPMorgan and Standard Chartered.

• Circle is embedding USDC directly into core banking systems and payment processors (such as FIS, Fiserv, and Finastra) to enable traditional financial institutions to seamlessly adopt stablecoins.

Ripple is actively entering the institutional banking business and has established partnerships with 9 of the top 100 traditional banks by asset size since 2023, including DBS Bank and BNY Mellon. Its strategic planning over the past year shows that the company has made 4 acquisitions in the areas of fund management fintech, prime brokerage, and B2B cross-border transaction processing to build its fintech stack:

• Palisade (acquired in November 2025) is a wallet-as-a-service custody platform for fintech companies and cryptocurrency-native companies, used for high-frequency trading, deposits, and wallet configuration.

• GTreasury (acquired in October 2025 at a valuation of $1 billion) is a fund management software provider used by large enterprises to manage cash, foreign exchange risk exposure, and payment operations.

• Rail.io (acquired in August 2025 at a valuation of $200 million) is a B2B stablecoin payment startup providing enterprises with inbound/outbound gateways and cross-border transaction infrastructure.

• Ripple Prime (acquired in April 2025 at a valuation of $1.25 billion, formerly Hidden Road) is a multi-asset institutional brokerage that clears approximately $3 trillion annually for hedge funds and financial institutions.

In December last year, Ripple and Circle, along with BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos, received conditional approval for a national trust bank license in the U.S. Next step: these cryptocurrency-native companies are preparing to move beyond partnerships to compete in establishing full-stack banking relationships.

Prediction 5: In response to the booming cryptocurrency companies, banks will tokenize existing assets to maintain control over deposits

Banks are actively responding to the booming cryptocurrency companies by converting deposits into blockchain-based tokens. Tokenized deposits are digital representations of ordinary currency held by regulated banks, remaining liabilities on the bank's balance sheet, providing customers with the same protections as ordinary deposits. On blockchain platforms, tokenized deposits can support faster settlements and programmable transfers, while the issuing banks retain regulatory authority and core customer relationships.

According to ratings, tokenized deposit issuance is currently the most dynamic blockchain market, with an average business maturity score of 3 (in deployment) or lower, even surpassing the Mosaic scores for stablecoin settlements and payments. According to our ESP (Execution, Strength, and Positioning) matrix, key players include:

• Stablecore (Mosaic score in the top 2%, score 747) enables banks and credit unions to offer digital asset products, facilitate transactions, and manage cryptocurrency collateral for loans.

• Fireblocks (Mosaic score as high as 867, ranking in the top 1%) provides flexible institutional-grade technology for tokenizing fiat currency, money market funds, digital currencies, and real-world assets. In February 2026, Fireblocks launched the Canton Network, a Layer 1 blockchain designed for the institutional finance sector.

Strategic partnerships are driving this movement:

• JPMorgan launched tokenized deposits and tokenized money market funds and began exploring interoperability of tokenized TradFi products with DBS Bank in November.

• Citibank's existing Citi Token Services solution added interbank payment capabilities in September.

• Vantage Bank partnered with Custodia Bank in October to develop tokenized deposit services, while Standard Chartered collaborated with Ant Group in December.

With the proliferation of stablecoins, banks will increasingly tokenize their balance sheets, modernizing settlement channels while maintaining deposit relationships, transforming defensive measures into competitive strategies.

Prediction 6: Stablecoins will become the rails for agent payments

AI agents require programmable, always-available funds, and stablecoins fit this need perfectly. This integration is natural: AI agents need verifiable identities, programmable funds, and autonomous execution capabilities, which are precisely what blockchain-native currencies provide.

Data shows that this is already underway. According to our Technology Trends Report, by 2025, the financial services industry will lead all sectors in AI agent collaborations, while payment processors building smart commerce rails are accelerating the integration of cryptocurrencies: for example, Mastercard's cryptocurrency partnerships increased from 6 in 2024 to over 25 in 2025.

From startups to industry giants, stablecoins are the common foundation for AI agent payment infrastructure. In the AI agent payment infrastructure market we analyzed, companies at various stages of business maturity rely on stablecoins for operation, including Circuit & Chisel (CM 1), Catena Labs (CM 2), Skyfire (CM 3), Crossmint (CM 4), and Coinbase (CM 5). Investors like Coinbase Ventures and Stripe have further reinforced this overlap.

As AI agents manage subscriptions, checkout processes, and after-sales services on behalf of consumers, stablecoins will naturally transition from cryptocurrency-native tools to the settlement layer of agent-driven commerce. We predict that by 2026 and beyond, stablecoins will provide instant, programmable payment methods for online marketplaces, cross-border retail, and embedded checkout experiences.

Prediction 7: On-chain AI agent platforms are laying the foundation for a self-sovereign agent economy

Stablecoins are becoming a key payment channel for smart commerce. However, a further parallel infrastructure layer is emerging: platforms where AI agents operate entirely on-chain.

Blockchain-based AI agent platforms provide the tools needed to create, deploy, and manage autonomous agents that run natively on-chain. These agents can execute decentralized finance (DeFi) transactions, participate in governance, interact with decentralized applications, and coordinate with other agents without human intervention.

In addition to execution, these platforms also enable shared ownership and monetization of agents through tokenization, pointing towards an agent economy where autonomous software participants can independently earn, spend, and allocate capital.

Thanks to advancements in agent AI technology, startups in this field are transitioning from experimental phases to infrastructure building. Although the average business maturity score is only 2 (validation phase), this remains the earliest market among over thirty blockchain sectors. However, the field is poised for explosive growth.

From 2023 to 2025, equity financing nearly doubled, and employee numbers grew by about 50%. Over the past two years, every independent company has raised funds, indicating strong investor confidence and foreshadowing rapid expansion in 2026.

So far, agent payments have primarily focused on consumers and e-commerce, with Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, and Shopify planning to launch agent commerce tools in 2025.

Blockchain-based AI agent platforms lay the groundwork for economic self-sovereign entities to transact and operate on decentralized networks. As agent payment infrastructure matures, this deeper coordination layer will become the cornerstone of the next phase of agent finance.

Prediction 8: New "Know Your Agent" (KYA) tools will emerge to regulate agent payment behaviors

As AI agents gain transaction permissions, new compliance boundaries are forming.

Among the 96 cybersecurity markets we track, agent AI security and risk management platforms are currently the fastest-growing sub-segment. "Know Your Agent" (KYA) startups differ from traditional "Know Your Customer" (KYC) providers; despite their average business maturity being only level 3 (still developing), their funding growth over the past year has exceeded 450%.

Early-stage startups are building identity, permission, and behavior scoring systems for autonomous software participants. Although they are still in their infancy, each of the following companies is showing strong momentum, ranking in the top 15% of all companies according to our proprietary Mosaic score:

• Keycard (business maturity 2, raised $30 million in Series A funding in October, Mosaic ranking in the top 2%) builds programmable identity and access infrastructure for AI agents, enabling secure identity verification, wallet control, and policy-based permissions in financial applications.

• Helmet Security (business maturity 2, raised $9 million in Series A funding in December, ranking in the top 8% of Mosaic) develops agent-native compliance and risk tools, embedding transaction monitoring, policy execution, and auditability directly into autonomous workflows.

• RunLayer (business maturity 1, completed $11 million in seed funding in December, ranking in the top 6% of Mosaic): provides execution infrastructure for AI agents, managing credentials, environmental isolation, and secure task orchestration across enterprise systems.

• Overmind (business maturity 1, completed seed funding in September, ranking in the top 15% of Mosaic) focuses on behavior monitoring of AI agents, tracking activity patterns and implementing safeguards to prevent abuse, fraud, or policy violations.

• T54 Labs (business maturity 1, completed seed funding in February 2026, ranking in the top 12% of Mosaic) scores payment agents based on comprehensive, dynamic risk profiles covering transaction history, counterparties, and behavioral signals.

As regulators and enterprises demand accountability for machine-driven finance, KYA tools will become foundational for agent payments, just as KYC is for human banking.

Prediction 9: Prediction markets are attempting to transition from gambling platforms to trusted data providers

Prediction markets (platforms where users trade on the outcomes of real-world events) are experiencing unprecedented growth momentum. Driven by Polymarket and Kalshi, equity financing in 2025 increased 35-fold year-on-year, soaring from $106 million in 2024 to $3.7 billion. CB Insights' Mosaic data shows that among over 150 financial services and blockchain markets, prediction market platforms are the fastest-growing fintech sub-sector.

Changes in valuations and employee numbers indicate rapid development for these two companies. In 2025 alone, Polymarket's valuation grew from $1 billion to $9 billion, with a 333% increase in employee numbers; Kalshi's valuation increased by 120%, and its team size expanded by 72%.

Our hiring insights show that Polymarket's top priority is to build regulated U.S. exchange infrastructure and expand its business into mainstream consumer groups beyond politics and cryptocurrency with new marketing talent. Kalshi is also investing resources in marketing positions to drive mainstream consumer acceptance of its products while establishing strong connections with traditional financial platforms through multiple engineering roles.

Strategic partnership data further emphasizes that both Polymarket and Kalshi aim to enter the mainstream financial services sector while repositioning themselves as trusted signal providers:

• In December 2025, Kalshi partnered with Harvard University to provide prediction market data to academic researchers.

• Polymarket collaborated with Dow Jones to distribute market insights to institutional audiences.

• Last December, Crypto.com teamed up with Kalshi to launch a national prediction market alliance, expanding their user base from cryptocurrency-native users to mainstream financial channels. Both companies have also adopted similar strategies to gain consumer trust: both opened grocery store pop-up shops in New York in February 2026.

In this field, the ultimate winners are not merely those with the highest trading volumes but those capable of transforming collective market signals into institutional-grade data products and establishing partnerships with mature institutions. For Polymarket and Kalshi, their ultimate goal is to transition prediction markets from speculative tools to core information infrastructure for decision-makers.

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