A powerful force is converging, poised to reshape the financial services industry in 2026. Emerging banks are going public and applying for full banking licenses. Cryptocurrency-native companies are partnering with or competing with the world’s largest banks. AI-powered agents are beginning to autonomously transfer funds. These developments collectively foreshadow a shift in how financial services are structured and how customer relationships are owned. Prediction 1: Emerging banks entering new markets will steal consumer deposits from traditional banks. New banks are no longer startups chasing traditional banks. A new class of digitally-first institutions is expanding globally, going public, and applying for full banking licenses, directly competing with traditional banks for key consumer banking relationships. The booming IPO market indicates growing confidence in the commercial maturity of these new banks. Chime completed an $864 million IPO in June 2025, setting a new record for US bank IPOs. PicPay subsequently listed on Nasdaq in January. Nubank, the largest new bank by market capitalization, received conditional approval for a US banking license in January. The company chose to apply for a full license on its own rather than partnering with a sponsoring bank and moved its co-founder full-time to the US to lead the new subsidiary. In the private sector, CB Insights' hiring momentum score reveals which B2C new banks are expanding most aggressively. Revolut leads the pack with a perfect score of 100 in hiring momentum. The company raised $2 billion in November, valuing itself at $75 billion, making it the most valuable private new bank in history, with a significant portion of the funds earmarked for expansion in the US market. Its hiring strategy demonstrates a systematic market entry strategy, such as simultaneously recruiting senior regulatory and compliance leaders in over 20 countries. Other companies include: YouTrip (33.6) is expanding aggressively in the Asia-Pacific region, with a particular focus on the Australian market. Kuda (31.6), focused on the Nigerian market, is recruiting across multiple African regions. Toss Bank (20.8) is recruiting for international remittance and foreign exchange-related positions, marking its cross-border expansion from South Korea. Even new banks that haven't 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, mortgage lending, and risk management to strengthen its competitive position in existing European markets. As this new generation of banks enters new markets with increasingly comprehensive services, consumer deposits for banks of all sizes are facing pressure from a completely new class of competitors. Prediction 2: The Buy-Now-Pay-Later Bank War. "Buy Now-Pay-Later" (BNPL) is no longer just a checkout function.Klarna (potentially the biggest fintech IPO of 2025) and Affirm (with a higher market capitalization and aggressive expansion in Europe) are both building comprehensive consumer banking services, and CB Insights business relationship data shows they are achieving this through overlapping infrastructure. These two companies are among the most active payment companies in terms of the number of partners, boasting 27 shared partners—including Apple, Adyen, Google, and JPMorgan Chase—integrating Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services across all aspects from device-based checkout processes and digital commerce to merchant banking and payment processing. Recent moves have further deepened this infrastructure. Affirm's partnership with Fiserv and Klarna's expansion into credit cards through Marqeta integrate BNPL services into debit cards, banking services, and everyday payments, extending far beyond installment loans at checkout. Klarna holds licenses in the EU and the UK and announced in June a pilot debit card service in the US through a partnership with Visa. Meanwhile, Affirm plans to expand its business beyond existing savings accounts (held by Cross River Bank) and submitted an application to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in January. Our job postings indicate that Affirm is recruiting leaders focused on analytics to develop its partner bank debit card program. Klarna, on the other hand, is strengthening its fraud detection and risk management capabilities by creating specialized roles, with a particular focus on regulatory compliance in the UK market. As AI reshapes how consumers shop, the pure buy-now-pay-later model may lose momentum, and the next phase for both companies will be a comprehensive consumer banking business. Prediction 3: Robinhood will become a financial super app. Equity financing in the wealth technology sector is projected to grow by 90% year-on-year in 2025, the largest increase among all fintech sub-sectors. Robinhood, the sector's highest-valued company, is actively expanding its banking, credit, and cryptocurrency infrastructure businesses. In terms of investment, Robinhood is moving towards vertical integration. Its acquisitions of Bitstamp (an institutional-grade cryptocurrency trading platform) and LedgerX (a cryptocurrency futures platform) extend its business beyond retail brokerage. Furthermore, it has partnered with Offchain Labs to build the "Robinhood Chain," an L2 blockchain specifically designed for EU users. This demonstrates Robinhood's ambitions extend beyond asset distribution to include on-chain market infrastructure. In banking, Robinhood is continuously expanding its capabilities to prepare for the launch of comprehensive banking services.In November 2025, Robinhood partnered with GoPuff and Coastal Community Bank to integrate its cash delivery service; in September 2025, Robinhood acquired Stakk, further strengthening its core banking capabilities. Our hiring data also confirms this shift, showing an increase in positions directly related to credit cards, banking products, and credit limit increases: full-stack engineers and software backend engineers, credit card and banking product design managers and senior product engineers, credit business analysts, and bank fraud specialists. Robinhood isn't just relying on partnerships to add features; it's building a vertically integrated financial system and talent pool covering areas like trading, cryptocurrency infrastructure, deposits, and credit. In the booming world of wealth technology, Robinhood is reshaping consumer banking as a brokerage firm. Prediction 4: Large cryptocurrency companies will challenge large banks. Cryptocurrency companies are no longer just offering alternatives to traditional banking services; they are building the next stage of traditional banking. The most aggressive companies expanding into cryptocurrency-native businesses in 2025 are Ripple, Coinbase, and Circle, each having established over 50 partnerships. According to our Business Relationship Insights report, all three leading companies are targeting the traditional banking system: Ripple is building institutional-grade custody infrastructure for real-world asset tokenization and digital funds management, through white-label solutions backed by well-known financial institutions such as BBVA and Absa Group. Coinbase is expanding from retail brokerage to provide institutional brokerage, custody, and payments infrastructure services to financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase 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 aggressively pursuing institutional banking, having partnered with nine of the top 100 traditional banks by assets since 2023, including DBS Bank and Bank of New York Mellon. Its strategic plan over the past year reveals four acquisitions in the areas of fintech for money management, prime brokerage, and B2B cross-border transaction processing to build its financial technology stack: Palisade (acquired in November 2025) is a wallet-as-a-service custody platform for fintech and cryptocurrency-native companies, used for high-frequency trading, deposits and withdrawals, and wallet configuration. GTreasury (acquired in October 2025 at a valuation of $1 billion) is a money management software provider used by large enterprises to manage cash, FX risk exposure, and payments. Rail.io (acquired in August 2025 at a valuation of $200 million) is a B2B stablecoin payments startup providing businesses with inbound/outbound gateways and cross-border transaction infrastructure. Ripple Prime (acquired in April 2025 at a valuation of $1.25 billion, formerly known as Hidden Road) is a multi-asset institutional brokerage firm that clears approximately $3 trillion annually for hedge funds and financial institutions. Last December, Ripple and Circle, along with BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos, received conditional approval for a National Trust Banking License in the United States. Next Steps: These cryptocurrency-native companies are preparing to move beyond partnerships and compete to build full-stack banking relationships. Prediction 5: In response to the booming development of cryptocurrency companies, banks will tokenize existing assets to maintain control over deposits. Banks are actively responding to the booming development of cryptocurrency companies by converting deposits into blockchain-based tokens. Tokenized deposits are digital representations of ordinary currency held by regulated banks and remain liabilities on the bank's balance sheet, providing customers with the same security as ordinary deposits. On blockchain platforms, tokenized deposits enable faster settlement and programmable transfers, while issuing banks can still maintain 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 (deployment in progress) or lower, even surpassing the Mosaic score for stablecoin settlement and payments. Based on our ESP (Execution, Strength, and Positioning) matrix, key players include: Stablecore (top 2% in Mosaic score, 747), which enables banks and credit unions to offer digital asset products, facilitate transactions, and manage cryptocurrency collateral for lending; and Fireblocks (top 1% in Mosaic score, 867), which provides flexible, institutional-grade technology for tokenizing fiat currency, money market funds, digital currencies, and real-world assets. In February 2026, Fireblocks launched Canton Network, a Layer 1 blockchain specifically designed for the institutional finance sector. Strategic partnerships are driving this movement: JPMorgan Chase launched tokenized deposits and tokenized money market funds, and in November began exploring interoperability between its tokenized TradeFi product and DBS Bank. Citibank added interbank payment functionality to its existing Citi Token Services solution in September. Vantage Bank partnered with Custodia Bank in October to offer tokenized deposits, while Standard Chartered partnered with Ant International in December.As stablecoins gain popularity, banks will increasingly tokenize their balance sheets, modernizing settlement channels while maintaining deposit relationships, thus transforming defensive measures into competitive ones. Prediction Six: Stablecoins will become the track for agent payments. AI agents require programmable, always-available funds, a need that stablecoins perfectly meet. This convergence is natural: AI agents need verifiable identities, programmable funds, and autonomous execution capabilities, capabilities that blockchain currencies natively provide. Data shows this is already underway. According to our Technology Trends Report, by 2025, the financial services industry will lead all industries in AI agent partnerships, while payment processors building smart commerce tracks are accelerating cryptocurrency integration: for example, Mastercard's cryptocurrency partnerships will increase from 6 in 2024 to over 25 in 2025. From startups to industry giants, stablecoins are the common foundation of AI agent payment infrastructure. In our analysis of the AI-powered agent payment infrastructure market, companies at various stages of business maturity rely on stablecoins, 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 further reinforce this overlap. As AI agents manage subscriptions, checkout processes, and after-sales service on behalf of consumers, stablecoins will naturally transition from crypto-native tools to the settlement layer for 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 the autonomous agent economy. Stablecoins are becoming a key payment channel for smart commerce. But a further parallel infrastructure layer is emerging: platforms where AI agents run entirely on-chain. Blockchain-based AI agent platforms provide the tools needed to create, deploy, and manage autonomous agents running 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. Beyond execution, these platforms also enable shared ownership and monetization of agents through tokenization, pointing to an agent economy where autonomous software participants can independently earn, spend, and allocate capital.Thanks to advancements in AI technology, startups in this field are moving from the experimental phase to infrastructure development. Despite an average business maturity score of only 2 (validation phase), it remains one of the earliest markets among the more than thirty blockchain sectors. However, the sector is poised for explosive growth. Equity funding is expected to nearly double year-over-year between 2023 and 2025, with headcount increasing by approximately 50%. Every independent company has raised funds in the past two years, demonstrating strong investor confidence and foreshadowing rapid expansion in 2026. Currently, agent payments are primarily focused on the consumer and e-commerce sectors, with Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, and Shopify planning to launch agent commerce tools by 2025. Blockchain-based AI agent platforms lay the foundation for autonomous economic agents 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 behavior. New compliance boundaries are forming as AI agents gain transaction authority. Of the 96 cybersecurity markets we track, AI-powered security and risk management platforms for intelligent agents are currently the fastest-growing segment. Know Your Agent (KYA) startups, unlike traditional Know Your Customer (KYC) providers, have seen funding growth of over 450% in the past year, despite an average business maturity of only 3 (still in development). These early-stage startups are building identity, authorization, and behavior scoring systems for autonomous software actors. While still in their early stages, each of the following companies is showing strong momentum, ranking in the top 15% of all companies based on our proprietary Mosaic scoring system: Keycard (Business Maturity 2, $30 million Series A funding in October, top 2% in Mosaic) builds programmable identity and access infrastructure for AI agents, enabling secure authentication, wallet control, and policy-based permissions in financial applications. Helmet Security (Business Maturity Level 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 Level 1, completed an $11 million seed funding round in December, ranking in the top 6% of Mosaic): provides execution infrastructure for AI agents, managing credentials, environment isolation, and secure task orchestration across enterprise systems.Overmind (Business Maturity Level 1, seed funding completed in September, top 15% on Mosaic) focuses on monitoring the behavior of AI agents, tracking activity patterns, and implementing safeguards to prevent abuse, fraud, or policy violations. T54 Labs (Business Maturity Level 1, seed funding completed in February 2026, top 12% on Mosaic) scores payment agents based on a comprehensive, dynamic risk profile covering transaction history, counterparties, and behavioral signals. As regulators and businesses demand accountability for machine-driven finance, KYA tools will become the foundation of agent payments, much like KYC is for human banks. Prediction Nine: Prediction markets are attempting to transition from betting platforms to trusted data providers. Prediction markets (platforms where users trade on the outcomes of real-world events) are experiencing unprecedented growth. Driven by Polymarket and Kalshi, equity funding is projected to increase 35-fold year-over-year in 2025, soaring from $106 million in 2024 to $3.7 billion. According to CB Insights' Mosaic data, prediction market platforms are the fastest-growing fintech segment across more than 150 financial services and blockchain markets. Changes in valuation and headcount indicate the rapid growth of both companies. In 2025 alone, Polymarket's valuation grew from $1 billion to $9 billion, and its headcount increased by 333%; while Kalshi's valuation grew by 120%, and its team size expanded by 72%. Our hiring insights show that Polymarket's top priority is building regulated U.S. exchange infrastructure and expanding its business beyond politics and cryptocurrency to mainstream consumer groups with new marketing talent. Kalshi is similarly investing resources in marketing roles to drive mainstream consumer adoption of its products, while also building strong connections with traditional financial platforms through multiple engineering roles. Strategic partnership data further emphasizes that both Polymarket and Kalshi aspire to enter the mainstream financial services space while repositioning themselves as trusted signal providers: In December 2025, Kalshi partnered with Harvard University to provide prediction market data to academic researchers. Polymarket partnered with Dow Jones to distribute market insights to an institutional audience. Last December, Crypto.com joined forces with Kalshi to launch a national prediction market alliance, expanding its user base from cryptocurrency natives to mainstream financial channels. Both companies have also adopted similar strategies in winning consumer trust: both opened grocery store pop-ups in New York in February 2026.In this field, the ultimate winners will not simply be the companies with the largest trading volumes, but rather those that can transform collective market signals into institutional-grade data products and establish partnerships with established institutions. For Polymarket and Kalshi, their ultimate goal is to transform prediction markets from speculative tools into core information infrastructure for decision-makers.