Reflections from Money20/20: Where Do We Go from Here?
- Mayank Sharma
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
A reflections blog from Money20/20 is never just about one week in Vegas – it is a conversation that stretches through the year until the next one. Each year, the event captures a snapshot of where the fintech world stands and where it is heading.
For me, this year’s edition felt different. Less dreamy, more grounded. Less about buzzwords, more about lessons learned – and most importantly, where we go from here.
The Fintech Landscape: A Maturing Reality
We have seen a proliferation of fintech players over the past few years — with many success stories in payments, digital wallets, challenger banking, trading, and BNPL. Yet as the dust settles, it is clear that not all categories have been equally successful.
Paytechs have emerged as the clear winners, capturing over 14% of incumbent revenue, while trading and brokerage are a distant second at around 5%. Lending and deposits are yet to capture trust and the larger share of wallet – while Insurtech is still in nascent stages.
The central question after a decade of Fintech and open banking regulations is: what happens from here?
1. Survival Mode Activation for Long-Tail Payments
In a fascinating BCG session on investable themes by leading wealth funds, one truth stood out:
“The money has dried up for payments and has moved to AI and Agentic commerce.”
This shift may mean a wave of consolidation is coming. The fintech long tail with startups offering similar value propositions on money transfer, cross-border payments, etc. now faces a survival test. Just as we saw during the e-commerce shakeout two decades ago, only the scaled and truly ingenious will endure. The rest will either consolidate or disappear.
The fintech industry is no longer about the number of players. It will be about who can execute sustainably, with differentiated value.
2. The On-Chain Evolution: From Hype to Utility
Decentralized finance is quietly maturing with the narrative transitioning from “to the moon” to “to the market.”
The tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) is no longer a speculative dream — it is a matter of timing and full-scale adoption.
Similarly, stablecoins — once almost entirely tied to crypto trading — finally crossed into mainstream payments. For the first time, fiat payments account for more than 8% of all stablecoin transactions.
But the Defi and blockchain industry will continue to face fierce competition from traditional and proprietary payment providers:
For domestic transactions and top international corridors, settlement times are already under 20 seconds—eroding the “speed” advantage that stablecoins offer.
The “cost” advantage also fades in off-ramping and currency conversions, especially in less liquid corridors.
Fraud protection remains a significant advantage of traditional, fiat-based payments.
Still, companies like Circle, Ripple, and Tether seem to be emerging as clear leaders. Their business models position them to gain as stablecoins find more regulated and scalable use cases. The question is this: how much ground will fiat paytech lose to on-chain providers?
3. Agentic AI: The Next Big Bet
If there was one trend that defined the narrative at Money20/20, it was Agentic AI, autonomous agents transforming business workflows.
Investment capital is flowing rapidly into agentic use cases across the financial ecosystem from wealth management and personalized investing to lending and underwriting, payment orchestration and routing, compliance and most notably, eCommerce.
Within this spectrum, agentic commerce has captured particular attention. Agents here are expected to autonomously shop and transact across multiple product categories, leading the next evolution of digital consumer behavior.
The big question, however, is whether these massive investments will translate into meaningful ROI. Expectations are that value will accrue to both sides of the ecosystem:
For merchants, the buyer journey will compress dramatically, even when the agent does not complete a purchase. High-volume, low-margin categories such as household goods may see accelerated conversions, while high-value segments like luxury goods and travel will benefit from richer and more personalized experiences.
For buyers, agentic systems will dynamically route payments across the most optimal rails to balance settlement, cost, and rewards in real time to deliver maximum value.
The revisit in this sector will not be if agents will dominate, but which ones:
Will the future belong to the hyper-personalized agents or the hyper-specialized ones?
4. The Vegas Metaphor Still Fits
The fintech ecosystem has delivered on its promises — from open banking to vertical SaaS, acquiring, and instant payments.
But as the poker chips reshuffle, it is clear that the player who masters Agentic AI will quite literally hit the jackpot. These developments will set the tone for the industry as we move ahead.
The AML and Compliance Lens: New Risks, New Realities
As financial workflows become more autonomous, AML compliance is entering its most transformative era too. The future risk environment will not just be faster, it will be more fragmented yet more integrated.
1. Dynamic Payment Risk
As agentic systems route payments in real time based on rewards, benefits, and settlement times, risk workflows will multiply in complexity. Traditional systems that normalize every transaction to formats like MT103 before screening will quickly become obsolete and even dangerous leading to regulatory blind spots and reputational exposure.
2. Beneficiary Validation
The next AML frontier lies in wallet ownership, KYC, and KYB especially as digital platforms expand. Knowing who holds or controls a wallet, as well as where the funds go, will define the compliance landscape of the future.
3. Granular, Risk-Based Controls
Compliance controls will need to handle granular configurations that route risks tied to country corridors, merchant codes, and thresholds to the right teams. This will become the ultimate test of AML program that ensures every transaction and risk scenario is considered in the right context.
4. From Fraud Integration to Cyberfusion
Another theme at M20/20 was on the next leap beyond fraud-AML convergence to Cyberfusion. This will be an integrated orchestration of signals from device metadata, session data, behavioral telemetry, and actual transactions that together will create a holistic understanding of customer intent and risk.
Closing Thought
Money20/20 2025 left us with a powerful reminder: the fintech story is not slowing down, but it is evolving and is nowhere near its peak. The next phase will be written by those who build thoughtfully and blend compliance, innovation, and trust.
As the chips are reshuffled for another year, the winners will be those who see with clarity. My bets are on on-chain finance, agentic AI, and real-time AML orchestration.
