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Q4 2025 in Consumer Finance: Fintechs move from user counts to dollars per engaged customer

    As engagement becomes currency, AI and disciplined growth are setting a new standard of what winning looks like.

    Late February 2026, Block and Chime reported their Q4 2025 results.

    The numbers illustrate that Block is leveraging AI and a leaner workforce to drive efficiency and monetize its most engaged users, while Chime is doubling down on multi-product adoption and responsible credit growth to strengthen its platform.

    Block: A pivot toward AI, efficiency, and high-value engagement

    Block’s Q4 2025 earnings drew attention for the metrics but also for the signals woven within them.

    The company reported: 

    • $2.87 billion in gross profit, up 24% year-over-year, alongside adjusted operating income of $588 million, a 46% increase, and adjusted EPS growth of 38%. 

    • Cash App, the consumer-facing engine, ended the year with 59 million monthly active users, with primary banking actives growing 22%, a cohort that company executives framed as the real driver of profitability. 

    • Square, the merchant services arm, saw its gross payment volume rise 10.3% year-over-year in Q4 2025.

    But the quarter’s more defining news was the nearly 40% workforce reduction, cutting headcount from over 10,000 to under 6,000 employees. Co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey characterized the move as “functionalizing the company.” 

    “Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company… a significantly smaller team using these tools can do more and do it better,” he said in a letter he published on X (formerly Twitter) announcing Block’s workforce reduction. 

    The layoffs were tightly linked to AI integration, designed to create leaner teams capable of faster product delivery, personalized customer experiences, and higher engagement-driven profitability.

    Yet some industry observers believe that Block’s reliance on AI as the primary efficiency narrative may oversimplify the story. The firm’s prior ambitious hiring and the expensive Afterpay acquisition continue to weigh on the balance sheet, suggesting that AI-driven efficiency may only be one piece of a broader puzzle that includes past overextension and capital intensity.

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    Coinbase rides the waves of stress and opportunity with its ‘Everything Exchange’ vision

      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.

      Everything Exchange comes to life

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      Banking: AI, automation, and the rise of digital-first scale

        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.

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        Why some major banks are bringing embedded finance in-house

          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.

          Two deals, one story

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          The Quarterly Review: Wise’s Lauren Langbridge expands domestic payment network capabilities and celebrates partnership wins

          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.

             

             

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            UBS’s US Charter: From a global wealth powerhouse into a full-service US bank

              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.

              Why go for a US banking charter

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              How a Brazilian digital bank is restructuring the fintech playbook – and why Wall Street is listening

                From São Paulo to Wall Street…

                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.

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                Making payments part of the workflow: Embedded finance in 2026

                For large organizations, managing money is all about the complexity of global operations, sprawling teams, and multiple software systems. All this creates a tension: how do you keep everything coordinated, accurate, and actionable? Even when companies know what they want to achieve, the tools they use often move more slowly than the business itself.

                Embedded finance has now become the backbone to bring this coordination together.

                In conversation with Eva Reda, Executive VP and GM of Global Commercial Services Products at American Express, we unpack how embedded finance is influencing commercial payments today and what its next phase could look like in 2026.

                Where embedded finance really moves the needle today

                The most transformative innovations often come from solutions built directly into the systems businesses already use, notes Reda.

                “Because of their complex, global operations, large organizations need their software systems – from travel booking to expense management to cards – to be operating as one,” she says.

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                When Midwest roots meet Sun Belt growth: Fifth Third’s big bet on scale and relevance

                  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:

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                  Trust Bridges Matter: When agentic systems meet payment reality

                  Agentic commerce, powered by AI agents that anticipate needs and act on a user’s behalf, is beginning to move from theory into practice. These agents promise to reshape commerce end-to-end, from discovery and negotiation through checkout and post-purchase workflows, potentially contributing trillions of dollars to global economic activity by the end of the decade, according to McKinsey. A key constraint, however, might already be at hand.

                  While AI systems are increasingly trusted to make decisions, they are not yet entirely trusted to share payment credentials directly. It may be early to talk definitively about agentic commerce systems, but this trust gap is already shaping how pilots are designed and how much autonomy is granted to AI in payments.

                  This article tracks those developments and the implications for commerce at large.

                  Orchestration moves faster than execution: Generative AI can generate content, surface recommendations, and simulate conversations. Yet the moment money changes hands, whether in checkout, authorization, or settlement, execution is constrained by consumer trust and the need for secure, regulated rails.

                  Recent PYMNTS data supports this trend: 33.5% of consumers prefer linking a digital wallet rather than allowing gen AI platforms direct access to card credentials or storing them directly. 

                  This means trust in AI’s decision-making does not automatically extend to moving money – a challenge that emerging agentic commerce

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