This Whisper Report investigates What Fintech problems are you solving in 2026? Drawing insight from on-the-ground conversations at Fintech Meetup 2026, it surfaces the pressures shaping next‑gen financial platforms and the bets leaders are quietly making. It previews how scale, trust, and automation collide before outcomes are obvious. Cited experts: Peter Daunton (Sokin), Kunal Datta (Unit21.ai), Jack Chawla (interface.ai), Liam Reaume (Sardine).
Fintech Meetup 2026 in Las Vegas filled the show floor with live discussions between banks, fintechs, and platform providers. Demonstrations clustered around fraud controls, identity and onboarding, data context, lending infrastructure, payments flow, and applied AI. Across booths, emphasis shifted from point tools toward systems designed for scale, speed, and operational continuity.
Fintech Meetup featured over 50,000 meetings, with over 1,000 CEO’s and Founders, and over 700 Financial institutions
Cautions
Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
To fully enjoy this event, be sure to meet the deadlines for filling out your profile, requesting and accepting meetings. One should also pre-register for the table talks.
Fintech is not a simple space to secure. Security isn’t a single tool but rather it’s a system. That system starts before money moves and ensures the sender and the receiver of the transaction are known. Deploying separate technologies to manage fraud, compliance, and risk in your organization? Sardine AI likes to pack all that functionality into one tidy platform to stop fraud BEFORE the payment is made.
While most Financial Crime investigation tools only see and investigate the tip of the iceberg, Unit21.ai would like to change that. Garnering the most attention are high risk alerts which the most sophisticated criminal organizations know how to avoid triggering. This leaves many Financial Crimes such as human trafficking undetected. But what if you had unlimited trained agents to investigate? By leveraging agentic AI, Unit21.ai enables an organization to conduct an in-depth review of every single alert. No hiring backlogs. Just results.
Growth in Fintech often means getting additional clients. Such growth comes with risks. Is this new client really who they say they are? Getting this wrong is very, very, expensive. Sumsub would like to simplify this risky onboarding task. Their unified solution combines identity verification and fraud prevention. Enabling quicker decisions without increasing the risk profile. This opens the door to growth, in real-time.
Enabling frictionless, seamless access, Alcatraz is a vendor in the identity and access space and the physical cyber space. Knowing your customer and knowing your business or KYC and KYB are risk areas that get a lot of attention. To conquer this space, Alcatraz leverages facial authentication to ensure security without compromising privacy.
Banking and Fintech, like many industries, still suffer from siloed data. While identity creates signals, data gives those signals context for action. Real-time precision is a constant requirement. tacnode shared their unified data platform to provide a single source of truth. This next-generation data infrastructure platform provides a common context for your heterogeneous regulated data environment.
Effectively applying metacognition with a GPT over all customers channels for the benefit of the organization in a unified brain has arrived. Meet BankGPT by interface.ai. BankGPT enables lessons learned on customer voice interactions to improve interactions on chats or mobile applications. Whether you are seeking an employee co-pilot or a smart collections AI agent, interface.ai supports 148 languages.
The credit lifecycle is critical to Financial Institutions. From lead generation to evaluation and credit decisioning or simply educating lenders, CRS Credit API offers a comprehensive solution. Their platform covers the entire lifecycle for business-to-business or direct-to-consumer. They were also excited to share their new authentication and evaluation products with attendees.
LendAPI introduced their holistic ecosystem enabling comprehensive functionality spanning loan origination, loan management, and loan core. This compliance-ready solution provides all-in-one features enabling all the tools including consumer communication.
Placing its differentiation on its order of operations, World Connection Outsourcers focuses on using AI to ensure first contact resolution. They prioritize AI, then journey mapping, the outsourcing. From their perspective, this enables the right answers at the right time.
If your desired platform would be to unite the entire payment stack in one place, Sokin heard your request. Sokin handles cross-border payments, FX, treasury management, and checkout solutions. Not stopping there, on and off-ramps for Stablecoin to USDT and USDC are now also available.
After 48 videos and over a dozen and a half fact checks, our coverage of Fintech Meetup 2026 closes. Fintech Meetup featured over 50,000 meetings, with over 1,000 CEOs and founders, and over 700 Financial institutions.
Registration was quite efficient. Pastries and snacks were scattered throughout expo hall. Mandalay Bay Food Court was also open. Enjoy the walkabout to and through expo hall*. One of the most unique aspects of Fintech Meetup is the networking! Beyond the talks and expo hall, Fintech Meetup is known for their one-on-one meeting schedules. Attendees must be on the look out to fill out their profile, request meetings, and accept meetings in order to participate. In addition, this event holds round tables break out rooms ensuring a true capability to build your network while you are there.
We always try to bring you fresh vendors in our coverage but you will recognize many brands in the walkabout from our coverage of other Fintech events such as the Money 20/20 USA 2025, or our coverage of Fintech Meet-up both in 2025 and in 2024. Likewise in the cybersecurity and anti-fraud space you will recognize vendors from our coverage of ISC West, Identiverse, and Black Hat USA 2025.
We conducted research for six additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: Fintech Meetup 2026 Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be sited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition. Be sure to monitor the syndicated broadcast of Computer Talk Radio for additional coverage of Fintech Meetup. All related syndicated links will be shared in the Whispers membership area of our channel.
The video edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question “What’s the best part about attending the Fintech Meetup live in Las Vegas?”.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
To navigate evolving fintech regulations, experts at Fintech Meetup 2025 emphasized three key strategies: staying engaged with the field and regulatory agencies, structuring well architected stable solutions, and leveraging AI or Copilots. Together these proactive approaches help fintech firms stay ahead of regulatory shifts while maintaining security and efficiency.
Target Audience Titles:
Chief Technology Officer, Chief Security Officer, Chief Information and Security Officer, Chief Trust Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Risk Officer
Head of Product, VP of Product, Chief Marking Officer, Data Protection Officer, Director of Data Protection
Enterprise Architect, Director of Data Governance, Chief Privacy Officer, Head of IT Audit
Key Takeaways
Today’s security breaches are the source of tomorrow’s regulations.
Security cannot be an afterthought; it must be planned from the beginning.
Leverage AI and Copilots that are integrated with your processes to aid employees.
We took the most frequently asked and most urgent technology questions straight to the Fintech experts gathering at Fintech Meetup 2025. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding how can we ensure compliance with evolving regulations? As Socure’s Matt Thompson shared, “I don’t think it’s enough in this space to be a passive Observer or responsive or reactionary to regulations, there’s a lot of Evolution right now happening.” Figure 1 shares three actions you can take to conquer evolving regulations.
One of the best actions an organization can take to stay on top of regulations is to stay engaged and in touch with the real world. First, real world happenings such as hacks define future regulations. As SecurityMetrics Matt Cowart shared, “QSA (Qualified Security Assessor) is really going to help you understand where you’re sitting at and as they are informed with the evolutions of technology and all the advances that are going on having them connected with real world teams.” Or as Matt Thompson of Socure suggested, “staying engaged with the regulators and the development of the regulations themselves.” If you know what the regulators are working on in draft, you will not be surprised when it becomes law. Keep in mind the reach of the company determines what exact regulators and what specific regulations apply. As OnFido’s Marie Millick shared, “we have a team of subject matter experts that are constantly researching. We also collaborate with the same team that works with interpole around everything around data privacy and identity.”
Many suggest the best way to be prepared for evolving scenarios of all types is to start with a robust and secure foundation. As Onbe’s Tony McGee shared, “our company is fully audited, fully solutioned and architected to protect the data.” This architecture doesn’t act alone but is complimented with strong processes. Tony McGee further explained, “ensuring that we build in the processes to make sure that every step of the way is a compliant one.” Together architecture and processes form a robust foundation. This robust foundation enables Onbe to ensure, “that the consumer understands all the fundamentals of the payout.”
Any clients at this phase should schedule an inquiry to receive guidance. We will set up a plan of inquiries during your journey to give you any guidance we may have or can gather to assist you. The plan should capture milestones including but not limited to strategy reviews, presentation reviews, and even architecture reviews.
Today, we are no longer left with antiquated tools. As Thetaray’s Adam Stuart pointed out, “the traditional rule-based systems you have to know what you’re looking for to build that rule but if you don’t know what you’re looking for and you’re looking for these new patterns and behaviors that people are using you can’t do that with the simple rule base which is why cognitive AI is such an important feature to include.” In other words, in addition to keeping up to date and starting with a solid foundation, the tool itself contributes to identification of potentially troubling patterns. Interface.ai’s Connor Tullilus draws us a picture of what this is like in the real world. “To be able in real time have a co-pilot AI assistant sitting behind the scenes to assist them in the day-to-day operations. One in real time being able to update your policies procedures while (two) being able to (use) the AI assistant hooking up with your current knowledge bases your share.”
*When vendors’ names or quotes are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference or what we heard doing our research, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document.
The 2024 Fintech Meetup experienced a 25% increase in size, featuring over 50,000 one-on-one meetings. Key areas of interest included development environments, product connectors, customer engagement solutions, and ACH payment simplification. Risk management and compliance were significant themes, with solutions for identifying threats, ensuring regulatory adherence, and verifying new clients. Identity verification and fraud prevention were also highlighted. Global risk decisioning platforms and extensive marketplaces were showcased, along with solutions for digital payouts, gift cards, and depositor retention.
The Conference
Fintech MeetUp 2025 was held in Las Vegas, Nevada and had just over 5,000 registered attendees including over 1000 CEOs, with diverse collection of exhibiting companies. Over 50,000 one-on-one meetings were also scheduled.
Cautions
It is critical you keep up to date with the deadlines as the MeetUp approaches to get the maximum networking from the MeetUp. If you registered in the last month before the event, you are already too late to participate in the meetups.
The event explicitly did not want any of the sponsored keynotes to be recorded or amplified. Sponsors should keep this in mind if they want any attention outside of those able to make it in-person those exact days.
Having covered Fintech Meetup in 2024, we knew what to expect from the meetups. As you can feel in the energy of the event, it was about 25% larger than last year. This year featured over 50,000 of their infamous one-on-ones – just be sure you register and get your information in early if you want to participate. Our coverage this time focused on the expo hall. In addition, we were able to conduct research for three forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.
Regardless of your role or fintech need, there was likely a vendor in that specific fintech space. Developers had Gitlab providing an environment to develop solutions from ideas, through the entire software development lifecycle to production. Creating a solution that requires that is required to connect to various products in the fintech space? Merge shared their vast collection of product connectors regardless of development or integration technique. Perhaps you are specifically focused on improving your customer engagement. Interface.ai provides an agentic AI solution designed exclusively for credit unions and community banks to engage with their customers. If the interface you are most concerned with is ACH payments, Trustly can simplify ACH payments and comes with a side of risk management.
Money makes the world go around so risk management will always be a significant area of focus within Fintech. A cognitive AI solution to identify missing threats, Thetaray seeks to find troubling patterns before an organization is compromised. More concerned with compliance? Security Metrics shared their capabilities for ensuring compliance not only with FinTech but also Healthcare and other regulated industries. Focused on compliance, and fraud and perhaps but also must increase your customer conversion rate? OnFido shared their combination solution that enables organizations to quickly and correctly verify potential new clients. The risk profile is configurable depending on the specific needs of a given organization at a given time.
If identity is an area of interest in your organization, TBW Advisor’s research, Conference Whispers: Identiverse is a must read. The identity space also featured quite a few vendors in the identity space. During an exclusive interview, Intellicheck told us about their exclusive access to the data required to strongly identify drivers’ licenses from USA or Canada. If you prefer to leverage phone intelligence, Prove previously covered at Money 20/20, shared an update to their solution that now goes beyond leveraging the chip in the phones. For Fraud, prevention is always better than detection, Aries Fraud Solutions is all about prevention achieved by leveraging different numbers on the card versus the strip. In the area of risk decision and fraud detection, it is also worth to evaluate the extensive offering by Socure with an active customer base across 20 different verticals.
For various solutions, it is frequently not only about what it can do, but how extensive globally is their coverage? Provenir informed TBW Advisors that their global risk decisioning platform is available in 60 countries serving anything from Tier 1 providers all the way to SMBs. It is a multi-component platform offering a marketplace in 120 categories. On the topic of marketplaces, MoneyLion shared their extensive offering with over 800 3rd party products serving 20+ million consumers and as well as the engine behind the largest enterprise fintech customers.
The B2C dimension is always a challenging dimension for payouts. Whether it is payouts for the workforce, or refunds, Onbe’s solution is bringing clients into the digital age. If you are focused more on gift cards, Incentive.AI can create customer solutions to fit your needs. Finally, an interesting solution to help retain depositors was shared by Wysh. Wysh enables financial institutions to offer free life insurance to customers based on deposit values.
While this year’s event was held at the Sands Convention Center of the Venetian, next year’s event will be at Mandalay Bay. The event will be held March 30-April 1, 2026.
