As the calendar flips to December, the fintech community is busy trying to figure out what’s coming in 2026. Read some of their best guesses below.
Sanctions and financial risk
“As sanctions expand across more geographies, the risk isn’t limited to newly added entities—it increasingly lies in long-standing relationships that can become non-compliant overnight. Across industries, companies are seeing payments initiated that should never be approved because a previously ‘safe’ recipient has been added to a sanctions list. In today’s geopolitical environment, diligence against up-to-date lists throughout the payment lifecycle is essential to avoid unintended exposure.
“Many companies assume their partners are performing their checks consistently, but assumptions are exactly what create exposure. In 2026, real-time, end-to-end screening of every payment becomes a business necessity, not just a compliance exercise.”
– Curt Hess, US executive president at Vitesse
Fintech hype vs. payments reality
“There remains a significant gap between fintech narratives and how payments actually move. While the industry talks about blockchain-based rails or ubiquitous real-time payments, the practical constraints of legacy infrastructure, regulatory requirements, and highly fragmented operational processes slow everything down. The U.S., in particular, still runs much of its payment flow through decades-old systems that weren’t built for instantaneous movement or universal interoperability.
“Until core infrastructure modernizes—and until institutions can reliably coordinate approvals, settlement, and verification across multiple parties—true real-time movement at scale will remain more of an aspiration than a reality. When that foundational layer catches up, that’s when we’ll see genuine acceleration.
– Hess
Trusted Execution Environment technology will reshape distributed compute and multi-cloud architecture
“In 2026, Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technologies will finally move from ‘interesting concept’ to real-world game changer. We’re going to see organizations secure memory and hardware in a way that simply wasn’t practical before, which opens the door for decentralized compute in a very big way. Companies will be able to safely split compute across multiple clouds, regional providers, and even on-prem environments, instead of keeping all their workloads under one hyperscaler’s roof. This will bring a level of flexibility and resilience that hasn’t been possible until now.
“What is interesting to note here is that the shift isn’t driven by budgets or hype, but by behavior. When you can secure workloads at the hardware level, you’re suddenly free to architect systems around business needs instead of who owns the data center. It unlocks more creative architectures for blockchain, AI, and high-performance computing, and gives organizations confidence that they can spread their risk without compromising security.”
– Richard Copeland, CEO, Leaseweb USA
The move to 25G continues, but will be messy
“Looking ahead to 2026, as older systems reach end-of-life and exchanges plan to move to 25G, we’re seeing firms steadily preparing for the change, even if full adoption hasn’t happened yet. While some firms are already ensuring they have the technology to make the switch faster when the time comes, others will take a slower path depending on the scale of their upgrades.
“With trading volumes across markets continuing to rise, higher bandwidth is becoming unavoidable. Agile vendors will work more closely with strong technology partners, playing a big role in closing gaps and bringing new products to market faster. Exchanges are already moving forward on fairness and 24/7 trading, showing that meaningful progress doesn’t always need to be regulation-driven.
“25G adoption is on the horizon, driven by rising trading volumes. As bandwidth demand increases due to data growth, some exchanges are expected to move to 25G. This will mean firms need to adapt their whole stack to the demands of 25G, including software, FPGAs, and the IP stack.
“However, many customers remain hesitant about 25G solutions or feel too locked into their existing infrastructure to transition. As many of these systems approach the end of life, the pressure to upgrade will increase. In a market that’s advancing quickly, to remain competitive, firms must ensure their trading platforms support 25G.
“Vendor partnerships will close technology gaps: More agile vendors, such as LDA, which can quickly customize technology to client needs, are stepping in to fill the gaps left by legacy technology. Strategic partnerships with other vendors are expected to play a big role in bridging the divide and delivering the innovations needed to upgrade technology without the long wait times from concept to implementation that larger vendors typically face.”
– Vahan Sardaryan, CEO of LDA Technologies