Fintech

The Insights & Research team at Finnosummit analyzed the 2026 Trends in Fintech report by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Here’s what truly matters—beyond the headlines dominating the conversation.

After several years of market correction, recalibration, and forced discipline, Fintech enters 2026 in a new growth phase, defined by greater maturity, execution-driven strategies, and clearer regulatory frameworks.

This is not just renewed optimism—it’s a structural reset.

Capital is flowing back, but under a new logic: fewer promises, stronger fundamentals.
Less focus on features. More focus on infrastructure.

And this is the core insight: the next Fintech cycle is not about speed or convenience.
It’s about rebuilding the financial system from the ground up.

From Products to Platforms: A Structural Shift

S&P Global Market Intelligence is clear: what’s coming is not another wave of Fintech apps, but a transition toward platform-based financial models.

Two technologies sit at the center of this shift:

• Stablecoins, now evolving into core infrastructure for settlement and liquidity management, not experiments.

• Agentic AI, not as a UX enhancement, but as an operational layer capable of making decisions, executing payments, and optimizing workflows in real time.

This represents a clean break from the previous cycle.
If the last decade of Fintech was about access, convenience, and digitization, the next will be defined by programmable, intelligent, and interoperable financial systems.

Capital Is Back—But This Time, It Remembers

One of the most relevant insights from the report: global Fintech investment in 2025 surpassed 2024 levels, reaching USD 29 billion before year-end, with expectations of moderate yet sustained growth in 2026.

What’s different this time?

• Proven business models are prioritized

• “Scale at all costs” is actively penalized

• Profitability, specialization, and execution capability matter more than growth narratives

Capital is flowing into mission-critical infrastructure: payments, fraud prevention, compliance, automation, and financial data.

The Buyer Is No Longer Always Human

One of the most powerful signals in the report is this: 2026 will be the first year of meaningful transaction volume generated by autonomous agents.

Agentic Commerce is no longer theoretical.
Networks like Visa and Mastercard, PSPs, and big tech companies are already building the rails that allow machines to buy, negotiate, and pay on behalf of consumers and businesses.

This unlocks massive opportunities—but also introduces new structural questions:

• Who is liable when an autonomous agent commits fraud?

• How does “top of wallet” change when agents dynamically select payment methods?

• What happens to interchange, advertising, and acquisition revenue?

Commerce is shifting from clicks to code.

If you want to explore this shift and anticipate an opportunity valued at more than USD 5 trillion, join Episode 3 of Conexión Fintech, co-produced with Mastercard, on February 12 at 10:00 a.m. CT, featuring experts from Mastercard, Microsoft AI, and Skyfire.

More Automation—And a New Risk Surface

The report does not romanticize AI.
It clearly warns that autonomous agents will become one of the next major fraud vectors in payments.

Deepfakes, synthetic identities, and malicious agents are scaling risk at an industrial level. As a result, concepts such as Know Your Agent, verifiable identity, auditability, and traceability are becoming foundational.

In B2B payments, however, Agentic AI offers a different promise: not just efficiency, but direct impact on cash flow, financial forecasting, and working capital optimization.

Automation stops being operational.
It becomes strategic.

From Payment Rails to Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)

One of the most important themes heading into 2026 is that Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in Latin America is finally entering its scaling phase.

According to QED Investors, the evolution of Pix in Brazil, along with the emergence of Bre-B in Colombia and DiMo in Mexico, signals something bigger than payments.

These systems are not just payment rails.
They are the foundational layers of a new Digital Public Infrastructure, enabling interoperable payments, digital identity, and open data flows.

According to The Internet of Opportunity: Unlocking Financial Interoperability in Latin America, developed by Interledger, 63% of payment institutions in Mexico already have the technology required to adopt interoperable payments, and 62% have technical teams ready to deploy them within six months.

The bottleneck is not technology.

The report highlights that the main barrier to scale is the lack of clear, proven use cases, not infrastructure readiness.

By integrating interoperable payments, digital identity, and open data, Latin America is moving toward a lower-friction financial system, capable of leapfrogging traditional models and unlocking new opportunities in financial inclusion and B2B innovation.

The upside is substantial: interoperability could save up to USD 1 billion annually in remittances and significantly expand access in rural and underserved communities.

In this context, 2026 may be the year when mandated interoperability stops being seen as a regulatory burden and becomes a system-wide catalyst for innovation.

The New Competitive Edge: Specialization and Execution

Another major shift is the end of the one-size-fits-all model.

In digital banking and Fintech, the next competitive advantage will come from deep specialization, not generic scale.

Digital banks, Fintechs, and embedded finance platforms that deeply understand SMEs, migrants, SaaS verticals, or specific industries are outperforming generalist players.

“For years, we talked about financial innovation as a competitive advantage. Today, it’s something else: it’s critical infrastructure. Companies that fail to understand this will lose efficiency—and relevance.”
Rafael Odreman, General Manager, Finnosummit

What This Means for Latin America

While the report is global, its implications are especially relevant for the region:

• Infrastructure over apps

• Trust over hypergrowth

• Integration over fragmented solutions

Latin America doesn’t need to replicate models.
It needs intelligent, interoperable financial infrastructure, built for local realities.

That’s where the real Fintech battle is happening.

“In Latin America, the challenge is no longer building more financial apps. It’s building reliable infrastructure that allows any industry to embed finance securely, profitably, and at scale.”
Andrés Fontao, CEO, Finnosummit

At Finnosummit, This Is Clear

The future of Fintech won’t be debated in the abstract.
It will be built at the intersection of technology, regulation, industry, and real-world execution.

If you want to understand where the financial system is headed—and what strategic decisions to make today—this conversation is just getting started.

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