Traditional Institutions are Losing the Customer Relationship: Fintechs, Neobanks, and Stablecoins Are All Coming for the Same Thing (Part 1 of a 2-Part Series)
C. D. DeSantis, BFA & AAS July 23, 2026
A Tipping Point Twenty Years in the Making
Bankers have heard predictions of disruption before. The warnings surfaced after the 2008 financial crisis, intensified with the emergence of platform technology companies, and amplified during the first wave of fintech innovators. But for twenty years, none of these events fundamentally shifted the traditional customer-bank relationship. According to McKinsey's 2026 Global Banking Annual Review, 2025 was the year that changed. Measured against the 1,000 largest banks and 1,000 largest fintechs by valuation, fintechs' share of combined revenue climbed from 10% in 2021 to 17% in 2025, growing 22% annually versus just 5% for banks over the same period. Investors have taken notice: those top fintechs now represent roughly 37% of the group's combined market capitalization, far outpacing their revenue share. [1]
Fintechs are no longer content to rent bank infrastructure, either. Twenty-one applied for U.S. banking charters in 2025, compared with just one the year before, and approval times are down about 40%. That shift, from partnering with banks to becoming banks, signals an industry maturing out of its disruptor phase and into direct competition for the accounts, deposits, and loyalty that banks have long taken for granted. [1]
Neobanks Break Through the Growth Ceiling
Neobanks present a related but distinct challenge. Revolut now serves 69 million retail and business customers and ranks as the 11th most valuable bank in Europe. Nubank counts 131 million customers and holds the top valuation spot in Latin America. Both are posting returns on equity in the 30% to 35% range, figures most incumbents can only aspire to, while operating with a fraction of the headcount. [1]
What began as a selection of narrow, single-product offerings has evolved into full-service banking. Revolut now offers roughly 50 products, including capital markets access, commodities and crypto trading, personal loans, and a suite of tools built for small and mid-size businesses, with private banking, mortgages, and corporate lending reportedly on the way. Nubank's trajectory has followed a similar arc, expanding from a no-fee credit card into full deposit accounts, transfers, and business services. These institutions are winning not on scale alone, but on a stronger technology foundation and a dramatically lower cost of acquiring and serving each customer, an advantage that hits hardest in exactly the small-business segment many community banks and credit unions consider core territory. [1]
The Two-Headed Technology Revolution
If fintechs and neobanks are the visible competition, agentic AI and stablecoins are the forces working underneath the relationship itself. McKinsey describes them as a “two-headed technological revolution” that makes it easier for both retail and business customers to bank without banks. [1]
Agentic AI no longer just answers questions, it acts, and as evidenced by recent events, it acts on its own. AI agents can already monitor balances in real time, sweep idle cash into higher-yield accounts, shift credit card balances, and compare products across institutions on a customer's behalf. That matters because net interest income still accounts for roughly 60% of retail-bank revenue, much of it earned from customers who simply never got around to optimizing their own deposits. An agent that does the optimizing for them quietly erodes that margin. The adoption curve is what should concern bankers most: it took generative AI just two years to reach 45% of the U.S. working-age population, compared with fifteen years for digital banking to hit the same mark. The gradual, generation-by-generation adoption that gave banks a grace period with earlier technologies simply isn't repeating itself this time. [1]
Stablecoins are earlier in their arc but pointed the same direction. Global circulation sits at roughly $300 billion today, supporting about $400 billion in real payment activity in 2025, modest next to global payment volumes overall, but industry estimates put the market at $2 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030. For commercial clients, the appeal is practical: near-instant, programmable settlement for cross-border payments and trade finance, without the correspondent-banking friction or the need to hold large cash buffers against timing gaps. As adoption grows, some of that value currently sitting in business deposit accounts has a real path to migrate into stablecoin reserves instead. [1][2]
Why This Hits Business Banking Especially Hard
For commercial bankers and credit unions with business banking divisions, this isn't a retail-only story. Several of these threads point directly at small and mid-size business relationships:
Treasury and cash management are prime targets. The same agentic tools optimizing consumer deposits are being built for business treasury. AI copilots that monitor cash reserves, flag risk, and route working capital automatically, are replicating the exact advisory work relationship bankers have historically owned. [4]
Neobanks are building business suites deliberately. Revolut's SME product line and reported move into corporate lending aren't incidental, they're a direct bid for the deposit and lending relationships community banks and credit unions rely on for stable, low-cost funding. [1]
Stablecoins change the cross-border conversation. Business clients with international suppliers, remittance needs, or trade finance exposure have a growing incentive to explore programmable settlement, and every dollar that moves off a bank's balance sheet is a dollar no longer funding that bank's lending book. [2]
Fraud and payment controls are being rewritten in real time. New Nacha rules place more fraud-detection responsibility on corporations before payments are sent, and the rise of agentic commerce, that is AI agents initiating purchases and payments on a business's behalf, is forcing banks to rethink permissioning and controls from the ground up. [5]
How Commercial Bankers Can Respond
None of this means the relationship is unsalvageable, but it does mean that waiting it out, the strategy that worked through the internet and smartphone eras, is no longer available. A few places to focus:
Lead with advice, not just accounts. Business owners will keep paying for judgment on cash flow discipline, credit structuring, and risk, even as routine transactions commoditize. Bankers who show up as advisors, not just account holders, are harder to displace.
Meet clients inside the tools they already use. Embedding banking services into the accounting, payroll, and ERP platforms business clients run daily reduces the friction that sends them looking for a fintech alternative in the first place.
Build or buy agentic capability rather than cede it. Offering clients an AI-assisted cash management or working-capital tool keeps that value, and that data, inside the bank relationship instead of handing it to a neobank or standalone agent. [4]
Take a position on stablecoins before clients do it for you. Even a measured strategy, evaluating tokenized deposits, partnering with an issuer, or simply having an informed point of view for cross-border clients, beats discovering the conversation has already moved on without you. [2]
Move at the speed the threat demands. Static annual reviews and slow product cycles were tolerable when the competition moved just as slowly. Faster credit decisioning, real-time onboarding, and continuous rather than annual client engagement, are quickly becoming table stakes. [3][6]
Partner with a Fintech to proactively provide the products your clients seek. With President Trump’s 5/19/2026 Executive Order 14405 streamlining processes and reducing regulatory barriers to partnership, now is an excellent time to explore options to offer your business clients the same products and expedience as the new competitors.[7][8]
Conclusion
The banking relationship has survived two decades of predicted disruption because it was built on something fintechs struggled to replicate: trust, earned over time and reinforced by every interaction. That advantage still exists, but for the first time, the institutions challenging it are matching banks on trust while beating them on speed, cost, and convenience. Commercial bankers and credit unions who invest now in advisory depth, embedded technology, and their own agentic capabilities won't just defend the relationship, they'll be positioned to grow it, even as the ground underneath it keeps shifting.
(Part 2 of this Series “The Fintech Charter Push: A New Executive Order Could Reshape Bank-Fintech Partnerships” to explore Bank-Fintech Partnership coming in August 2026)
Resources and Sources
McKinsey & Company, Global Banking Annual Review 2026: Precision with Speed — primary source for fintech revenue share, neobank scale and ROE figures, agentic AI adoption data, and stablecoin projections cited above.
McKinsey & Company, The Next Age of Fintech: AI, Digital Assets, and New Paths to Success — background on fintech maturation, banking-license strategy, and stablecoin market sizing.
CB Insights, Fintech Predictions 2026 — additional context on neobank IPOs, crypto-native banking charters, and the shift toward agentic commerce.
Backbase, Banking Predictions 2026: AI & the Future of Banking — perspective on agentic-AI copilots for treasury and cash management, and embedded finance for SMBs.
The Fintercept, Revolutions on Deck: The Trends Poised to Define Fintech and Banking in 2026 — industry commentary on agentic commerce, fraud liability shifts, and Nacha's 2026 rule changes.
Deloitte Insights, 2026 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook — regulatory and risk-management considerations for agentic AI and digital-asset adoption.
Federal Register, Integrating Financial Technology Innovation Into Regulatory Frameworks (Executive Order 14405), the official text of the executive order and its requirements.
Independent Community Bankers of America, ICBA Statement on Executive Order on Financial Technology Regulation, the community banking industry's initial response to the order.
Expert Business Development LLC has no relationship with nor endorses any of the aforementioned entities. Links provided to resources are strictly for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice.