What a ride the first half of 2026 was. I had the pleasure of attending ten industry events across Amsterdam, Berlin, Monaco, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. As well as meeting friends and making new ones, I now have a pretty good overview of what’s coming up on the industry’s agenda in the months and years ahead. And while there is a lot about AI, the actual change might come from another direction.
From AI experimentation to implementation
AI is clearly moving from experimentation to implementation. At Money20/20, FIBE, Frankfurt Digital Finance, FundForum, and TradeTech, many workshops and keynotes focused on how agentic AI can actually automate banking and payments. There are especially high hopes regarding increasing efficiency in trading, fraud detection, risk management and compliance. Clearly the objective is high gains in productivity, yet no financial institution is ready to have the machine fly solo. So, for now, the improved efficiency remains a promise rather than reality.
While the on-stage focus at all of these events was AI, one-on-one conversations around the conference floors quickly turned to tokenisation. During my many encounters with financial services professionals, we talked about how digital native products will need an entirely new infrastructure – and hence will bring genuine change to the sector. Most people understand that this will have an impact on how they do their jobs, and even the actual definition of their jobs. The industry has largely moved beyond asking whether digital assets matter, and is now discussing practical adoption. I still have my personal doubts about crypto coins, but the technology that has been developed as a result of the hype is now increasingly ready for institutional adoption. Financial service institutions cannot thank the world of crypto enough for providing volume and stress testing over the last few years. Together we now know where the guard rails are, where the infrastructure is robust, and where it still needs work. Leadership of all companies that have anything to do with any kind of securities needs to evaluate their business model.
Rebuilding the infrastructure
What strikes me is that this is actually a much broader development than tokenisation. Financial services is also focused on rebuilding the infrastructure underneath the products. Tokenised securities, digital money, new payment rails, and API-driven services are all part of the same bigger movement. AI might change how financial institutions work, but it’s the new infrastructure that will change what financial institutions can actually offer and how those products move through the system.
After falling off the radar for a while, to my surprise the term ‘open banking’ was used a few times again this spring. At Money20/20, The Banking Scene, FIBE, and Frankfurt Digital Finance both speakers and delegates raised this again – with the context that retailers are now genuinely looking at embedded finance, pushed in many cases by ‘marketing’ rather than the IT or finance department.
We now have a whole new demographic of younger retail investors with one or many investment apps on their smartphones, ready to consider a wide variety of investments and financial products. Banks and other FIs have both the chance and the responsibility to guide this crowd to sustainable and trustworthy financial products. From my perspective, crypto opened a conversation with an audience that financial service providers would not traditionally have reached.
“The growth audiences of the future will be younger, and better educated”. This will especially shift the needle in wealth management where these new audiences will demand a completely new approach and (distribution) infrastructure – digital first is overtaking wealth management already. The distribution infrastructure of the future is being built now.
Banking-fintech collaboration
The word ‘disruption’ has been replaced with ‘partnership’. I expect more and more fintechs to be acquired by traditional financial institutions. The traditional world has the volume and the distribution to really scale, and it will be ‘mass’ that is needed to make the business cases finally stick.
Perhaps this is another indication that the fintech industry is entering a new phase. The first years were about proving that financial services could be done differently. The next phase is about integration, distribution, regulatory credibility and scale. In other words: less disruption for disruption’s sake and more industrialisation of the innovations that actually work. The name of the game now is volume.
Regulation as a competitive advantage
Something else I’ve observed is the different mindset of the regulators. Across these European events, regulators have also been in attendance – spending time with them, you remember that they are professionals with the same passion for the industry as the founders, influencers and other active industry participants.
Regulation is no longer viewed merely as compliance, but as a competitive factor. Today, financial service providers want to license in Amsterdam or Berlin to show their investors, clients and (institutional) business partners they can pass the due diligence needed.
The European position
Across all of these conferences, an overarching theme from speakers and delegates was European competitiveness and sovereignty. The report Mario Draghi wrote in 2024 is certainly not forgotten, but rather still quoted and referred to. Not just in the context of current initiatives like the euro-denominated stablecoin project by Qivalis, but also discussions – on strengthening European capital markets or the drive to turn the ‘average European consumer that prefers to put money in a savings account’ into active investors financing economic innovation.
At events like Frankfurt Digital Finance, Money20/20 and FIBE, speakers touched upon the need for a payments infrastructure of European origin. Wero was an important step, but there is clearly an appetite for ‘Eurofication’.
And this perhaps brings all these trends together. AI, tokenisation, embedded finance, new forms of distribution and regulation are not isolated developments. They all require infrastructure. And increasingly the question is not only who builds the next financial product, but who owns and controls the rails on which that product runs. For Europe this makes infrastructure not just a technology issue, but also a question of competitiveness and sovereignty.
For me, after flying out to Berlin, Monaco, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Amsterdam, making the rounds at expo floors and sitting for hours in uncomfortable chairs, I see that the European financial technology ecosystem is still vibrant, lively, innovation-focused and – while perhaps less ‘disrupting’ – is 100% ready for the future. Keen to see what events will bring after the summer break. See you all there!
Richard Neve is executive creative director and partner, Netherlands and Germany
