The article argues that while 2024 was defined by isolated advances in artificial intelligence, stablecoins, crypto, and digital banking, 2025 was the year those pieces converged into integrated financial platforms. The author frames the year as a structural shift in financial infrastructure, organized around three foundations: autonomous artificial intelligence agents, instant crypto settlement, and platforms that integrate multiple services instead of specializing. Companies such as Stripe, Revolut, Coinbase, and OpenAI are presented as early winners because they built operating systems for finance and commerce where artificial intelligence, payments, banking, and digital assets work together.
The first set of stories focuses on stablecoins going mainstream, artificial intelligence agents transforming financial workflows, and prediction markets entering the financial mainstream. PayPal expanded PYUSD, Klarna announced KlarnaUSD, Amazon and Walmart explored stablecoin launches, and JPMorgan issued JPMD deposit tokens, while the GENIUS Act signed on July 18, 2025 created a comprehensive United States regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. Stripe then built a full stablecoin suite and moved deeper into digital asset infrastructure. In parallel, Stripe, OpenAI, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Perplexity artificial intelligence, Revolut, and Klarna pushed artificial intelligence from a tool to autonomous agents that can operate financial infrastructure and power agentic commerce. Prediction markets grew from curiosity to what the author calls a trillion-dollar opportunity as Wall Street and venture capital firms began treating them as core forecasting infrastructure.
Next, the article details how OpenAI, public markets, and leading fintechs accelerated convergence. OpenAI used ChatGPT integrations with Shopify, Walmart, and others to move into payments, commerce, and financial services, and by December 2025 OpenAI launched an in-app store inside ChatGPT that positioned it as a distribution platform for financial and commercial applications. The year also brought a wave of fintech IPOs, including Klarna, Chime, eToro, Gemini, Bullish, and Circle, which the author interprets as a signal that fintech business models have matured enough for public markets. Revolut’s evolution is highlighted as a template: Revolut officially reached a $75 billion valuation in November 2025, with 2024 revenue surging 72% to $4 billion and profit before tax growing 149% to $1.4 billion, as it secured a British banking license, entered private banking, and positioned itself as an artificial intelligence powered financial operating system.
The article then turns to the mainstreaming of crypto and the rise of financial infrastructure giants. In 2025, several digital asset firms secured historic federal banking charters, Bank of America prepared for cryptocurrency integration, Standard Chartered expanded its digital asset services, and Intesa Sanpaolo made Bitcoin investment history, which the author reads as regulators formally acknowledging that crypto and banking have merged. Stripe reached ~$107 billion valuation and used artificial intelligence powered payments, an agentic commerce suite, stablecoin infrastructure, and acquisitions such as Orum and Bridge for roughly $1.1B to become a core financial infrastructure provider. Global Payments’ agreement in April 2025 to acquire Worldpay for $24.25 billion is described as the fintech deal of the year and an example of consolidation at massive scale.
Finally, Coinbase is portrayed as another operating system winner. Coinbase evolved from a crypto exchange into what the author calls an operating system for global finance, completing ~10 M&A deals, launching regulated perpetual futures, and becoming an institutional and consumer gateway to digital finance. The article closes by arguing that 2025 revealed a common pattern: companies that integrated artificial intelligence, crypto, payments, and banking into unified systems outperformed those that focused on narrow specializations. The author suggests that 2026 will be about scaling the connected infrastructure built in 2025 and building new applications on top of this converged financial stack.
