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Wall Street's programmable future

The week that was

🚨 Deals deals deals

Credit score

Quote of the week

Banks, asset managers and market utilities are preparing for a financial system where securities trade continuously, money moves across programmable networks and AI agents decide where to put it.

That was the emerging consensus among Wall Street and crypto executives gathered this week at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's 10th Annual Fintech Conference.

Why it matters: The lines between banking, crypto and capital markets are blurring faster than regulators can set the rules.

State of play: Tokenization is shifting from an experiment at the financial system's edges to infrastructure being built by its biggest incumbents.

DTCC expects to launch its tokenization service in October after conducting live production transactions in July involving real securities and 10 large financial institutions.

JPMorgan's Kinexys moves $7 billion to $10 billion a day through tokenized deposits on its private network, said Oliver Harris, JPMorgan's global head, although adoption of its public-chain deposit token remains limited.

Between the lines: Banks and stablecoin companies largely agree that money is moving on-chain, but disagree over what form it will take.

"There's a globally fragmented system where you have disparate networks," Circle treasurer Dan Fishman said. "The stablecoin is solving the connective part between those networks."

Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long offered the opposing view: "Tokenized deposits are going to eat stablecoins' lunch."

Yes, but: AI agents could make this infrastructure far more disruptive by automatically moving money among deposits, securities and higher-yielding products.

"I think this is the great threat to the banking industry," Bank Policy Institute CEO Greg Baer said.

An agent instructed to maximize yield could sweep money into a money-market fund and return it "in nanoseconds" before a customer's payments are due, he said.

Reality check: Key parts of this infrastructure are advancing under temporary exemptions, unfinished rulemakings and agency interpretations rather than a durable federal framework.

SEC Crypto Task Force chief counsel Taylor Lindman said the agency's exemption for tokenized-security venues is time-limited because the framework "needs to be brought through to rulemaking."

The CLARITY Act's failed Senate vote left significant gaps in federal oversight, including spot trading of digital commodities.

"It will take Congress to address that regulatory gap," said former CFTC commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero.

The bottom line: The industry is no longer debating whether finance will become tokenized and automated, but whether its safeguards can move as quickly as its money.

1 big thing: Wall Street's programmable future

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Investors funded the behind-the-scenes tools used by banks, payments companies and other operationally heavy businesses this week.

🤖 Go.AI raised $85M for bank AI hardware. Go deeper

🛒 Confido raised $55M to automate CPG back offices. Go deeper

🪙 Hifi raised $37M for stablecoin payments infrastructure. Go deeper

🩺 Benefits broker Corridor launched with $25M. Go deeper

🏠 Sela raised $21M for mortgage voice agents. Go deeper

🏢 Trebellar raised $18M for real estate management software. Go deeper

🔎 IPID raised $16M for bank account verification. Go deeper

🇧🇷 NG.Cash raised $15M to expand its crypto business in Brazil. Go deeper

2. The week that was

Illustration of a distorted dollar on a grid 

👉 GO HERE TO CATCH UP on all the fintech deals this week.

Numeral, a sales tax compliance platform, today announced a $100m Series C funding. Insight Partners led, joined by Salesforce Ventures, Geodesic, Benchmark, Mayfield, FCVC, YC and Uncork. Go deeper

Perpetual (ASX: PPT), an Australian fund manager, rejected a US$2.6b takeover offer from EQT and said that it ended negotiations. Go deeper

GTCR and Reverence Capital Partners are seeking to sell Charlotte, N.C.-based Allspring Global Investments, which they bought from Wells Fargo in 2021, for around $4b, per the FT. Go deeper

3. 🚨 Deals deals deals

Illustration of a row of laptops with binary code, money and circles.

⚖️ New York sued Polymarket over alleged illegal gambling. (WSJ)

Related: Polymarket is lobbying Europe to treat its bets as financial products. (FT)

Also: Kalshi wants to offer margin trading. (CNBC)

🤖 The CFTC is examining agentic AI's role in finance. (PYMNTS)

🧾 Banks warned that AI shopping bots could increase fraud and privacy risks. (Reuters)

Related: Shopify will use Meta's Muse for agentic checkout. (WSJ)

Also: PayPal partnered with Meta on Muse checkout. (Barron's)

🇷🇺 Kremlin-backed fintech A7 moved $6.9B through global banks. (FT)

🏦 Tether has funds stuck at EQIBank, which is fighting a U.S. asset seizure. (The Information)

🚨 Hackers stole $351.6M from Bitget, prompting it to halt withdrawals. (Bloomberg)

💳 JPMorgan explored sharing rejected card applications with private-credit firms. (WSJ)

📊 Coinbase opened IPO access to U.S. retail traders. (The Block)

🪙 SoFi began stablecoin settlement on Mastercard's network. (The Block)

🍎 Square integrated Apple Business into its seller dashboard. (PYMNTS)

🇨🇳 Tencent launched a payment app for foreign visitors to China. (Bloomberg)

🙂 Revolut is piloting facial-recognition checkout in the U.K. (Bloomberg)

4. Credit score

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"A bunch of kids have figured out that they can gamble legally under the CFTC rules on sports in states where you can't legally gamble on sports."

— Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney at the FRB Philadelphia Fintech Conference, arguing that prediction markets are being used to circumvent state sports-betting laws

5. Quote of the week

Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney 

Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Photo:  Horacio Villalobos/Getty Images

September 26, 2026

1 big thing: Wall Street's programmable future