Tearsheet

Fintech just lived through four distinct ages — pioneers, growth-at-all-costs, the 2021-22 hype cycle, and the brutal reset that followed. Now we’re in a fifth: bigger, more profitable, and more disciplined than any version that came before it. Stripe’s reportedly eyeing a six-figure IPO. Fintech listings tripled investor appetite this year. And yet talk to anyone who lived through 2021, and they’ll tell you this doesn’t feel anything like that boom.

Revolut looked like the fintech industry’s favorite contradiction. It grew like a tech company, launched products like a startup, expanded like a global platform, and talked about itself as something larger than a bank. Yet the market largely viewed it as a fintech orbiting the banking system rather than embedded within it, until it obtained banking licenses across major markets.

This analysis tracks the top company developments and how markets absorbed them through Thursday’s close, focusing on where shifting narratives translate into price action. It is part of Tearsheet PRO’s weekly 10-Q Newsletter, where strategy meets market reaction. I track how leading banks and fintechs are evolving in public markets and how investors are pricing those moves.

The weekly 10-Q newsletter is part of the Tearsheet Pro subscription, where I unpack the recent moves and strategies of leading banks and fintechs in the public space, coupled with stock market analysis. In your inbox every Friday! Message Sara PayPal is weighing the shutdown of its venture arm, PayPal Ventures. Venture arms usually die for one reason: the parent company no longer believes it can afford ambiguity. And PayPal, right now, is choosing clarity over optionality.

The ‘Letter from the Editor’ series features exclusive insight and opinion-driven analysis from Tearsheet editor Sara Khairi. The focus is on linking ideas, questioning assumptions, and tracking shifts across both mature and emerging trends in financial services. This is now PRO-only content. Subscribe to PRO so you never miss a Letter from the Editor exclusive. Issue # 7 “Consumer” and “business” are well-defined categories around which financial services are still structured.

Coinbase, Visa and its partners, and blockchain infrastructure firms like Rain and Bridge are pushing an uncomfortable line of inquiry for incumbents: what happens when money can be spent without ever being routed through a bank account? The answer, emerging across multiple announcements in June 2026, is a new category of card programs that don’t originate in deposits but in tokenized dollar balances. Coinbase’s new card, built with Cardless, sits at the starting point of this shift.

Figure and Method set out to close that loop. Figure is the largest non-bank HELOC originator in America, a public company on the Nasdaq running a two-sided capital marketplace on blockchain rails. Method is a financial connectivity API that gives lenders real-time access to a borrower’s full liability picture — and the ability to pay those liabilities off directly at the moment of funding.

A few years ago, the problem was getting startups access to capital. Today, the problem is what to do with the capital they already have. Higher interest rates, lingering memories of the regional banking crisis, and growing pressure on finance teams to maximize every dollar have changed how businesses think about cash. That dynamic, in turn, is forcing banks to find ways to keep customer cash from moving off-platform and into higher-yield alternatives.

As blockchain moves from the margins of finance toward the core of banking infrastructure, a mix of established and emerging institutions is shaping its development and deployment. Tearsheet’s Bankchain Awards recognize the banks, fintechs, and technology providers advancing the adoption of digital assets, tokenization, stablecoins, and distributed ledger technology across financial services. This year’s winners stand out for moving beyond experimentation and delivering real-world impact.

Banking scale has been measured in assets, deposits, and branches. In 2026, another metric may be emerging: how much of the country’s financial activity would be disrupted if your systems stopped working. That helps explain why Fifth Third’s recent invitation to Anthropic’s Project Glasswing holds importance. The bank has been invited into an invite-only cybersecurity program that grants a small group of vetted partners early access to the Claude Mythos Preview model.