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
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.
Brains, Blockchain, and Backbone: How finance evolved in 2025
2025 was anything but ordinary. AI evolved from tools to agentic decision-makers. Crypto roared back and shrugged off skepticism to reclaim a seat at the table. And regional banks, long content to play it safe and lurk in the shadows, began experimenting, innovating, and proving they can move differently yet fast.
As the year wraps up, we zoom in on the standout trends across publicly traded companies I covered this year — and what they signal for 2026.
Trend 1: AI — How AI found its place in banking, from a back-office helper to a decision-making partner
2025 began with a mix of fascination and unease around AI in the financial sector. There was a cloud of uncertainty: could AI take over jobs, reshape banking as we know it, or disrupt entire business models? At industry gatherings like the World Economic Forum 2025 at Davos, AI wasn’t just a topic – it was the topic. Panel after panel debated whether AI would be a villain, a tool, or a teammate.
The Wall Street incumbent embraces stability over volatility in asset management
On December 1, Goldman Sachs revealed plans to acquire Innovator Capital Management, a provider of defined-outcome ETFs, bringing 159 defined-outcome ETFs and $28 billion in assets under management into its portfolio. This move underscores where the incumbent bank now prioritizes growth.
[Defined-outcome ETFs, also called “buffered” ETFs, are exchange-traded funds designed to deliver a specific, pre-set investment result over a defined period. They use options and derivatives to offer upside potential while limiting downside losses.]
This is a structural pivot. Innovator gives Goldman scale in one of the fastest-growing corners of public markets and nudges the firm a little further out from the revenue volatility that has long defined its dominance. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026.
In 1935, with $25,000 borrowed from friends and family, Harold Webster Smith founded the First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Waterbury, Connecticut, to help people build homes during the Great Depression. His vision was that banking should serve the people around you, not just the bottom line.
Webster Bank founder Harold Webster Smith (right) makes the bank’s first loan to Joe Baltrush in December 1935 on the steps of his Waterbury home at 114 Chambers Street. Source: Webster Bank
The organization was later renamed Webster Bank when it went public in 2002 and converted to a national commercial bank in 2004, enabling broader service offerings while largely preserving its regional identity.
Today, Stamford, Connecticut, serves as its headquarters, but its branches extend from suburban New York to Rhode Island and Massachusetts, giving it a solid regional footprint.
Webster Bank (NYSE: WBS) remains true to its ethos: serving communities across the Northeast while moving billions of dollars of healthcare payments and powering fintech platforms behind the scenes.
Webster Bank’s evolution from a local thrift to a publicly traded commercial institution reflects a long-term focus. The bank serves clients across three key areas: commercial banking, consumer banking, and healthcare financial services.
In today’s 10Q edition: What’s Left in the Shadows, we shine a light on the less-talked-about publicly traded names in the industry that do their own thing but remain integral to the banking ecosystem.
If fintech competition were a boxing ring, Klarna and SoFi are trading very different kinds of punches, but both are very much in the fight for meaningful scale.
Case Study 1: Klarna — Stretching the BNPL muscle in the US
Recent move: Klarna struck a deal with Elliott Investment Management to sell up to $6.5 billion in US “Fair Financing” loans over the next two years. These are not short-term, no-interest BNPL loans — they’re fixed-term installment loans, with Klarna retaining underwriting and servicing duties.
Why it matters:
Capital efficiency — By selling receivables under a forward-flow agreement, Klarna frees up balance sheet capacity to issue more loans.
Scalable risk management — Rather than raising debt or equity, this structure allows Klarna to grow its credit book without taking on too much risk upfront.
US-centric growth — Fair Financing is growing faster in the US than globally (Klarna disclosed GMV up 244% in the US, vs. 139% globally over the past year).
The trajectories of Robinhood, Upstart, and LendingClub highlight the broader fintech trends heading into 2026
The latest round of earnings from Robinhood, Upstart, and LendingClub reads less like a scoreboard and more like a temperature check on what fintech even means now. Each firm, in its own way, is evolving past the product it was born with – the trading app, the AI-driven lender, the online credit marketplace – and chasing something harder: resilience.
But how they’re getting there couldn’t look more different.
Robinhood: From trades to everything
Robinhood’s early years were about giving retail traders a seat at the table, but its recent quarters have been about building a whole new table.
Why Truist’s new business card isn’t really only about the card
As competition for SMB loyalty intensifies, financial institutions are rethinking where the first touchpoint begins. Increasingly, that entry point isn’t a checking account or a loan – it’s a card.
Truist’s recent launch of its Business Premium Visa Infinite card fits squarely into that evolution. The super-regional bank is using the card as a relationship anchor: a gateway into an ecosystem of payments, working capital, and treasury solutions built around how small businesses operate.
Chris Ward, Head of Enterprise Payments at Truist
“It’s not just a credit product — it’s a relationship anchor,” says Chris Ward, Head of Enterprise Payments at Truist. That framing reflects a broader shift in banking strategy: away from transactional products and toward integrated, ecosystem-driven relationships where a card becomes both a data engine and a loyalty bridge.
Payments is an industry that rarely stands still, and Sri Shivananda has spent enough time in its trenches to know how fast the ground can shift. Now Global Head of Payments Technology at J.P. Morgan Payments, his reflections on leadership and innovation cut through the usual hype.
Shivananda’s career – from PayPal and eBay to one of the world’s largest banks – gives him a long view of how payments and its underlying tech have evolved. What he’s watching closely today: how real-time payments are setting new expectations, how AI is starting to reconfigure workflows, and why building inclusive teams matters if any of that is going to work at scale.
Here’s my full conversation with him on what it takes to build in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Sri Shivananda, Head of Technology at J.P. Morgan Payments
The industry is starting to act like rate tailwinds are no longer guaranteed… because they’re not.
Main takeaways from today’s Edition: Big banks are expanding their focus from a credit-first approach to infrastructure-focused moves.
A few of this week’s notable earnings highlights:
J.P. Morgan Chase: $14.4B in Q3 profit; payments revenue up 13% YoY, leaning on network scale and capital discipline.
The Bank of New York Mellon: $1.34B in profit; fee income dominates, signaling its growing role as the institutional back office.
Citigroup: $3.8B in profit; treasury and trade solutions up 7% YoY as its restructuring tilts toward core transaction banking.
Writer’s Take:
Infrastructure is the new growth engine. Some of the biggest US banks are shifting their bets from lending booms to owning the financial plumbing.
The common thread among all three of these major banks is prioritizing payments, servicing, and transaction flows over pure lending growth.
Trendline points to fee-based revenue resilience, operational efficiency, and a race to own the rails of global finance. Less talk about rate windfalls, more about rails and recurring flows.
For the better part of two years, the story of America’s largest banks has been consistent: net interest income swelling on the back of higher rates, resilient consumers, and sturdy balance sheets. But Q3 2025 marked a different pattern.
This quarter was about how the biggest financial institutions are deliberately repositioning themselves for a landscape where rate tailwinds alone may no longer do the heavy lifting.
The headline numbers from J.P. Morgan Chase, The Bank of New York Mellon, and Citigroup were strong, but the subtext was even solid: strategic capital deployment, infrastructure modernization, and measured credit vigilance are now front and center.
This quarter, Wall Street stopped coasting on macro and started working on what comes after it.
