The company shows one way lending technology is changing.

Stablecoins are moving from crypto rails to mainstream payments infrastructure. Regulatory support and institutional investment are accelerating adoption, but consumer trust gaps, fragmentation, and liquidity risks pose near-term hurdles for digital payments.

Heavy investments in its crypto tech stack are bearing fruit.

Crypto is increasingly mainstream, but community banks could be playing with fire.

FIs that follow new rules and manage risk responsibly have less to worry about from highly volatile price movement.

In 2026, economic uncertainty is quietly reshaping consumer payment behavior, driving shifts across cards, cash, BNPL, and emerging alternatives as households adapt how they manage spending and access liquidity.

Private banking needs to change.

FIs need to contend with the growth of stablecoins as a payment mechanism and their popularity as an asset Gen Z consumers favor for a number of different banking uses.

Consumer loan originations rose sharply, and it expects a boom if credit card interest gets capped at 10%.

It’s an early mover among traditional financial institutions.

The banking industry’s pushback has fallen flat against OCC trust charters for crypto firms.

Banks, crypto companies, and Congress continue to grapple with regulating the space.

Sluggish fixed point-of-sale (POS) terminal sales are forcing providers to rethink their strategies. From adding softPOS capabilities to adding AI tools and vertical-specific offerings, POS software is becoming the real competitive battleground.

2025 was a big year for cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency payment users grew 24.8%, to 4.9 million US adults, per our forecast. Between institutional buy-in and unprecedented support at the highest levels of the US government, the crypto market hit record highs—before plummeting in the final months of the year. Crypto gained mainstream momentum, but its volatility hasn’t changed. For banks and crypto infrastructures, this unpredictability kneecaps efforts to integrate crypto as an accepted currency at the point-of-sale.

A Canadian dollar-backed stablecoin is coming, but it may get stuck in a regulatory quagmire.

Themes in stablecoins, crypto infrastructure, bank charters, and Gen Z behaviors.

An institutional crypto desk would legitimize crypto in a way that no other FI could.

The 10 most-read briefing articles of 2025 included analyzing Gen Z behavior, AI agents, and more.

Visa will offer stablecoin settlement in Circle’s USDC for its US network, per a press release. Visa and Mastercard are investing in crypto to preserve their dominance in the US payment ecosystem. Crypto-based payments have been slow to catch on in the US—we forecast just 1.8% of US adults will transact with crypto this year. It’s unclear which components of crypto will enter the mainstream, so a strategy like Visa’s, where it invests in everything from stablecoin-issuing sandboxes and crypto settlement to cards that transact over traditional rails but pay out rewards in crypto, could position it to maintain its edge wherever crypto catches on.

PNC unveiled direct Bitcoin trading for private bank clients—high net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high net-worth (UHNW) individuals. PNC clients will be able to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin through PNC using Coinbase’s crypto as a service product. Amid the Great Wealth Transfer, banks and brokerage firms can’t ignore crypto, and they shouldn’t satisfy themselves with retail offerings. With integrated crypto trading and custody, PNC fixes a crucial competitive gap with crypto firms and forward-thinking brokerages, augmenting wealth services to attract consumers who expect to invest in crypto. Peers will follow.