Coinbase is trying to bridge two financial worlds: crypto and traditional finance, while navigating the challenges of public policy.
Coinbase [NASDAQ: COIN] is outgrowing its early role as a simple crypto exchange.
Recent moves suggest that the firm is evolving into a unified platform for multiple financial assets and services, positioning itself as a bridge between traditional finance and the digital asset economy. This transformation is guided by what the company calls its “Everything Exchange” strategy – a term it began emphasizing in late 2025 – aimed at removing boundaries between asset classes and offering trading, financial services, and developer infrastructure within a single integrated platform.
“Our Everything Exchange vision is about removing artificial boundaries between asset classes and building for the next generation of markets,” the company noted in its recent press release.
But broadening that scope also exposes Coinbase to new regulatory, competitive, and market pressures: the balancing acts that come with trying to be more than a crypto exchange.
The new battleground in banking is intelligent operations and scalable execution.
In 2026, banking is about moving money smarter, faster, and with fewer humans in the middle. Across corporate finance and global retail operations, banks are experimenting with technology and operational design in ways that challenge long-held assumptions about scale, speed, and control.
Three recent developments exemplify what’s happening in money movement: Goldman Sachs deploying AI agents, Truist automating corporate receivables, and Nubank expanding abroad with a lean digital model. All demonstrate how the modern banking playbook is evolving.
Case Analysis 1: Goldman Sachs’ AI agents as “digital colleagues”
Goldman Sachs is testing a new frontier in operational finance: it’s deploying autonomous AI agents built on Anthropic’s Claude mode to enhance internal productivity and streamline workflows. These agents are undergoing trials for rule-based tasks such as transaction reconciliation, trade accounting, and client onboarding; roles that have resisted automation for decades because of high regulatory and operational complexity.
Inside incumbent banks’ push to own the embedded finance stack
Capital One has spent the past two years doing something unusual for many US banks: rebuilding itself in plain view.
First came the Discover acquisition in 2024, a move widely read as a scale play that gave Capital One greater reach across credit cards, payment rails, and consumer financial infrastructure. Then came the Brex acquisition announcement in January 2026, a very different kind of asset on paper, but one that fits a similar underlying logic.
These deals signal that Capital One is collapsing the distance between product and distribution, software and balance sheet, embedded finance and the bank itself. This isn’t about cards. And it’s not really just about M&A. It’s about ownership.
Notes from the desk: Welcome to this month’s Quarterly Review, a series where I dive into what executives from some of the best brands in financial services are focusing on in this quarter, as well as how they are planning to achieve their goals. It’s a chance for the industry to learn about what goes on behind an FI’s four walls and how leadership manages their priorities.
Unlike news, strategic planning in the offices of some of the most important players in the market is never slow. It’s this planning that this series taps into, much more to come, stay tuned.
In this edition, we will check back in with Wise’s Commercial Director for Wise Platform (Americas), Lauren Langbridge.
Executive Summary
How much can an executive at a big fintech achieve in 4 months?
Wise’s Lauren Langbridge’s answer is this: 2 domestic network expansions with significant strides towards a third and a fourth, one new partnership and the expansion of another, and organizing a dedicated conference for clients like senior payment leaders, as well as key stakeholders like business owners and policy makers.
For Wise, Langbridge’s achievements yield direct business value:
Direct Pix (Brazil) and Zengin (Japan) connections significantly increase Wise’s global capabilities
Wealthsimple and IBKR partnerships expand platform reach across retail and business segments
Industry appearances and engagements, as well as talent acquisition, allow Wise to scale resiliently
The Full Review
Our review articles in this series are an exclusive offering for our TS PRO subscribers. If you want to dive into the juicy stuff and read the details of their labors and fruits —beyond the executive summary below— please consider upgrading your subscription.
How UBS is strengthening its operations, tech, and competitiveness in the world’s largest retail banking market.
When you think of UBS, the Zurich-headquartered firm and one of the world’s largest wealth managers operating in over 50 countries, the first things that come to mind are exclusive clients, Swiss banking discretion, and global investment services. In January 2026, UBS Group AG, already publicly traded on the SIX and NYSE, signaled a broader ambition after receiving conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national bank charter.
The bank charter gives UBS the regulatory authority to accept deposits, expand checking accounts, and offer traditional lending products directly – a significant step beyond its historical US footprint focused on wealth and investment clients. For decades, UBS in the US operated largely as a wealth-centric entity, relying on brokerage and investment management platforms, rather than core banking relationships. With this bank charter, UBS moves into a domain where operational infrastructure, risk engines, and customer-facing technology are now mission-critical at scale.
When a challenger bank born in São Paulo opts for Wall Street for its IPO filing over its home turf, it raises a question no growth investor can ignore: What does it take for a digital bank from an emerging market to play on the world’s biggest stage – and what does that tell us about the future of public fintechs?
Agibank is the second Brazilian fintech in recent weeks to take this route, just days after PicPay, also in São Paulo, announced similar plans. These moves point to a renewed appetite among Latin American digital lenders to tap global capital markets after years of dormant IPO activity in the region.
But beneath the headlines, the ticker symbol AGBK, and a reported target of raising up to roughly $1 billion in proceeds, lies a deeper story about scaling fintech infrastructure, navigating risk, and building a technology platform that can serve millions without collapsing.
A backstory of growth and reinvention
Agibank didn’t start life as a fintech powerhouse. Its roots trace back to 1999, when founder Marciano Testa, then a college student, launched Agiplan as a credit distributor serving financially underserved segments – eventually evolving into Agibank and becoming fully digital in 2018.
For Fifth Third, relevance and reach matter as much as scale.
In today’s age, where finance is measured by margins, scale, and digital reach, strategic positioning matters as much as legacy positioning. For Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank [FITB], a storied regional bank with roots extending more than a century and a half, this reality has translated into decisive action.
In October 2025, the bank agreed to acquire Dallas-based Comerica Incorporated in a $10.9 billion all-stock transaction that materially expands Fifth Third’s scale, geography, and competitive posture as it enters 2026.
It is one of the biggest regional bank acquisitions of 2025 and carries deeper significance.
The deal highlights
At its core, the Fifth Third–Comerica transaction is simple in structure but significant in impact:
For years, Wall Street’s approach to crypto followed a familiar script: offer access, avoid ownership, and keep product risk at arm’s length. Large banks distributed crypto-linked funds, approved selective exposure for wealthy clients, and built infrastructure, while refraining from issuing products themselves.
Morgan Stanley’s early‑year filings signal a notable shift in that posture.
The bank plans to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF, a Solana ETF with staking exposure, as well as an Ethereum Trust offering staking rewards to investors for potential extra yield.
The question attached to Morgan Stanley’s recent move
Notes from the desk: Welcome to The Quarterly Review! It is one of the only media pieces that allow readers to track improvements through time. It’s a chance for the industry to learn about what goes on behind an FI’s four walls and how leadership manages their priorities.
And a review mandates a check-in, as I like to say, so stay tuned to hear all about how the exec turns his ideas into reality.
In this edition we focus on Jeff Pomeroy, SVP, Payments, Services, & Platforms at PayPal.
Executive Summary
Enterprise payments are the engine behind modern commerce. As businesses scale globally, they need payment infrastructure that can keep pace with complexity, volume, and ever-changing merchant demands. PayPal, one of the most recognizable names in payments, is doubling down on its enterprise capabilities to serve the world’s largest merchants.
In today’s story, the spotlight is on a PayPal executive with three decades of payments experience, who shares how the company is unifying its B2B platform across markets, forging partnerships to bring enterprise-grade payments into physical retail, and building value-added services.
The Full Review
[Pomeroy]: When I joined PayPal in 2024, I stepped into a challenge that felt both familiar and fresh. After three decades in payments – from the early days of developing the first consumer e-commerce services in the 90s, to processing payments at scale at Blackhawk, to building issuing and leading the North American product team at Adyen, and creating a brand-new unified cloud-based platform at Fiserv – I knew the opportunity this time was about harnessing PayPal’s tremendous assets and momentum to bring our enterprise payment and service capabilities to full global scale.
PayPal Enterprise Payments (the artist formerly known as Braintree) sits at the center of that effort. We already had incredible technology, deep merchant relationships, and a trusted global brand when I came on board.
My focus has been on unification and intense execution with an end goal of growth: Unifying all of the incredible assets that we have built and acquired, and executing around a few key priorities that reflect our customers’ needs.
The focus: Platform unification and growing value added services and partnership impact
To get there, I’m focused on three core objectives:
Operate as one unified platform globally: We need to integrate our payments stack across the U.S., Europe, APAC, and Canada, a single integration, one set of APIs, and consistent capabilities for merchants.
Expand in-store through our partnership with Verifone: This collaboration, which in my view is a best-in-class partnership, allows us to bring PayPal’s enterprise stack directly into physical retail environments. Wherever Verifone has a footprint, which is about half of all global in-store merchants, we can go. By leveraging their existing terminals and software, we can enable in-store payments for merchants in a matter of days rather than months. We’re just getting started in terms of what this partnership can realize for our customers and plan to expand it in the coming months.
Scale value-added services: We’ve launched a suite of new services, like network tokenization,smart retries,optimized debit routing, and global payout services, that improve authorization rates and reduce costs. These value-added capabilities strengthen our relationships with merchants and create new growth opportunities for PayPal. We plan to double down here in the next six months.
The goals that we’ve set are about building the kind of payments platform large merchants increasingly need: one that works the same way everywhere, handles scale easily, and gives them a clear view of how their business is performing. Moreover, it’s a payments platform that does more than processing payments. Internally, that means moving from strong individual products to a single and unified system that brings everything together for our customers.
This approach makes it simpler for merchants to grow with us. They get one way to connect, one set of tools to manage transactions, and the consistency they expect from a global payments partner. When we deliver that, PayPal becomes a bigger part of how their business runs day to day – not just a payments option, but part of the infrastructure they rely on.
We’ve been quietly building toward this for a while. I always tell my team our North Star is to be the best at what we do, and I think we’re close. If we hit these targets over the next six months, we’ll be in rarefied air and confidently operating at the level of the world’s leading payment providers.
Plan of action
I mentioned our focus on “intense execution”. When I first joined, the priority was clear: win in enterprise payments globally. To do that, we had to change how we execute.
Early on, our teams had no shortage of talent or ambition but needed focus. The organization was juggling too many priorities at once, shifting direction whenever a new deal or idea surfaced. To help solve this, we put up guardrails around the way we work.
Today, every initiative is evaluated through three lenses: merchant demand, ROI, and contractual obligations. That simple discipline has changed everything. It brought clarity to what we build and why we build it and helped us focus our energy where it matters most – on driving performance, efficiency, and merchant satisfaction.
We’ve also doubled down on listening as a core part of execution. A revamped merchant intake function keeps us close to our customers and ensures their feedback directly shapes our roadmap. Each quarter, we review everything we’re doing and reserve the right to pivot if priorities shift. It’s simple, but it’s transformed how we operate. We’re now driven by what’s meaningful, not just what’s new.
The culture driving our progress
It’s hard to describe our culture in a word or phrase, but what I can articulate are the behaviors I try to model, that I’d like to think are helping to drive our progress. One, I roll up my sleeves. I am a product guy at heart. I love the details. I meet teams in the weeds: what are you building, what problems are you seeing? After three decades, I’ve seen a lot – I might have simple suggestions. Many are product leaders on the way up; I hope to motivate them or offer a different lens. More time in the trenches makes me a better leader.
For our teams, that means leaning in one-on-one with our engineering counterparts: what’s in the backlog, what’s deploying?
That’s not to imply a culture of micromanagement. It’s the opposite. I try to create a culture of empowerment. My door is always open, but I don’t want people to come to me for permission. I might offer advice, but they’re fully empowered to make the call. My goal is to remove obstacles, so we can all move faster.
Finally, as we are moving fast, I try not to lose sight of the importance of making space to think. I block time for quiet. I walk. You’ll often find me talking or having coffee with people across campus. It frees me up to think, and it helps me deal with day-to-day pressure by giving me that space to reflect and introspect.
There was a time when banks and fintechs competed mostly on bells and whistles: smoother apps, faster checkout, appealing rewards. But in the world of public markets and quarterly earnings, functionality gives way to fundamentals. At the intersection of traditional banking and modern fintech lies a simple but growing question: what actually drives sustainable value for banks today?
Is it the buzz‑worthy growth of payment volumes and new revenue streams – or the old‑school strength of deposit balances and net interest income? The answer isn’t as cut-and-dry as headlines might suggest; it’s a mix of factors.
Banks that are expanding their deposit base while also focusing on building fee-based revenue, payments, and now blockchain payments are pursuing a hybrid model approach. If executed carefully, this model can strike a balance between stability and growth, keeping deposits at the core while payments support expansion.
