Welcome FINTECHTALKERS!
This episode is a forward-looking roundtable on the 2025 → 2026 transition in financial services and fintech—where the arc from digital → mobile → embedded is now bending toward what comes next: agentic commerce and agentic banking, alongside the renewed momentum in stablecoins, tokenization, and programmable money.
To get past the noise, Paddy sits down with three greats across financial services and fintech—each seeing the developments from a different lens:
Ron Shevlin — Chief Research Officer at Cornerstone Advisors; Senior Contributor at Forbes; Fintech Snark Tank. Brings the bank and credit union reality: boardroom priorities and open banking economics.
Steven Ramirez — CEO of Beyond the Arc. Focused on strategy-to-execution, customer experience, and change management.
Bradley Leimer — Strategic Advisor at Darrery Capital. Brings a fintech + venture + large-bank operating perspective, with a pragmatic lens on what becomes real infrastructure.
Across an informal, end-of-year “friends getting together” conversation, they unpack what shifted in 2025—the thaw in fintech sentiment and exits, banks charging for data access, why banks feel increasingly defensive, and how the industry is moving toward convergence (fintech + banks) even as TradFi vs DeFi remains contentious.
And then the big one: agentic AI—what it actually means, why governance becomes the bottleneck, and how customer experience may evolve when it’s your agent talking to the bank’s agent.
🎧 Listen Now for a clear, grounded map of what matters heading into 2026—without the hype.
Key takeaways
Fintech sentiment is shifting: IPO/exits and public-market appetite are back in the conversation—changing the mood heading into 2026.
Open banking is getting real about economics: charging for data access forces a reset from “free rails” to sustainable models.
Banks are in defensive mode: deposits and lending profitability dominate near-term priorities, especially for mid-sized institutions.
“Customer-first” isn’t a slogan—it’s the strategy: competitive advantage goes to whoever satisfies customer needs best (AI + human + execution).
Agentic AI = intelligence + tools + autonomous action: but autonomy, ROI, pricing models, and governance are the hard problems.
The CX interface is changing: from screen/menu navigation to conversational intent—and eventually agent-to-agent interactions.
Editor’s Note (Post-Record Addendum):
We need to bring the OGs back together—this was recorded before Venezuela, the proposed 10% credit-card APR cap, and a potential SCOTUS tariff ruling. There’s a lot more to unpack now.
My quick take: agentic commerce—and the growing adjacency to DeFi—, will make a 10% credit-card APR cap more than a pricing headline; it becomes an accelerant for a structural rewrite of the card business. Issuers will deploy agents not only to streamline operating costs and improve risk management, but to open the floodgates of agentic commerce that changes where value is created.
Just as digital wallets and services like Uber removed friction and reshaped the payment experience, the “AI Card” will do more than optimize checkout—it will transform how commerce is initiated, negotiated, and executed. And combined with DeFi, merchants can increasingly leverage their own balance sheets—not the banks’—to extend credit, further diminishing the role of interest income in credit card economics. The result is a shift from an interest- and interchange-centric model to a far more commerce-centric one, where the economic center of gravity moves upstream into discovery, intent, decisioning, and fulfillment.
AI Cards + agentic commerce + stablecoins + DeFi = a wide-open greenfield for networks, fintechs, and issuers in 2026.
Timestamp table
0:00 – 2:45 – Setup: The 2025→2026 transition
Digital → mobile → embedded → agentic + stablecoins/tokenization on the rise.
2:46 – 8:10 – What changed in 2025
IPO thaw, fintech winter easing, and bank-side surprises (including open banking/data access pressure).
8:11 – 13:40 – The arc of fintech: where it’s actually headed
Why “% of fintech done” is the wrong question; the customer problems still aren’t solved.
13:41 – 20:15 – Banks vs fintech: purpose, partnership, and reality
From “banks are evil” narratives to collaboration—and why transformation takes longer than people think.
20:16 – 27:55 – Convergence debate: Fintech + banks… TradFi + DeFi?
Agreement on fintech-bank convergence; pushback on “TradFi-DeFi convergence” framing.
27:56 – 37:30 – What banks are actually focused on
Deposits, lending profitability, product vs experience debate, segmentation opportunities (incl. underserved niches).
37:31 – 45:10 – Large bank lens: AI, investment patterns, and what funding signals
AI pilots, efficiency gains, leadership patience, and the post-2021 funding reset.
45:11 – 49:10 – AI adoption reality check
FOMO deployments, slow approaches, and why governance becomes the 2026 story.
49:11 – 56:20 – Agentic AI demystified
The three pillars, autonomy questions, ROI/pricing, and who governs agents inside institutions.
56:21 – 1:03:30 – The durable advantage: serving customer needs best
Why tech-first thinking fails; alignment and execution win.
1:03:31 – 1:10:45 – The future CX interface
From screen design → conversational intent → agent-to-agent banking interactions.
1:10:46 – 1:15:53 – Bold predictions for 2026
CX rises, AI embeds into products to take action, and regulation gets “funky.”
FINTECHTALK: A Top 10% Global Podcast Shaping the Future of Fintech, AI, and Crypto and was recently ranked in the Best 100 Future Tech Podcasts by Million Podcasts.
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Enjoy and always be in the know,
Paddy Ramanathan
Founder of iValley and Host of the FINTECHTALK™ Show (on Substack, Apple Podcast, YouTube, and Spotify)
Interested in sponsorship opportunities and be associated with sculpting the future? Please reach out to fintechtalk@substack.com.
Thanks to ChatGPT for suggestions.
