As Money 20/20 convenes in Las Vegas in late October, perhaps the last gathering of this magnitude in 2025, it’s time for a reckoning that in some respects is uncomfortable: What did we get right? What did we miss? And more importantly—what does it mean for 2026?

Banking professionals don’t typically seek the limelight. We’re a regulated, cautious bunch by necessity. But in February 2025, I published an article that said the quiet parts out loud—predictions about X Money challenging Venmo, warnings about Buy Now Pay Later becoming a consumer debt time bomb, concerns about quantum computing as the 800-pound gorilla nobody wanted to discuss. The intention wasn’t controversy; it was a wake-up call about the velocity of change in an industry where complacency can be fatal.

Now, as 13,000+ payments, fintech and ecosystem professionals prepare to descend on Las Vegas, we owe ourselves—and you—something far more valuable than fresh predictions: intellectual honesty about where our foresight met reality, where reality had other plans, and what it all means as we chart the course toward 2026.

When announcements become currency for the unserious

Let’s start with the prediction I got technically correct but fundamentally wrong.

In February, I wrote that X (formerly Twitter) would partner with Visa to introduce “X Money Accounts,” a service enabling real-time peer-to-peer payments that would challenge Venmo in the US market. On January 28, 2025, that partnership was announced exactly as forecast.

CEO Linda Yaccarino proclaimed it would enable “secure + instant funding to your X Wallet via Visa Direct.” The financial press buzzed. Visa’s stock ticked up. The payments world took notice.

And then what happened?

By May, Elon Musk confirmed limited beta testing was underway, cautioning that “when people’s savings are involved, extreme care must be taken.” By July, Yaccarino stepped down amid controversies involving Grok, X’s AI chatbot. As I write this in mid-October, X Money remains what it’s been for eight months: an announcement. Licenses secured in

41 states.
Partnerships trumpeted. Beta tests whispered about. But not a single consumer dollar has moved through the platform.

Here’s what I learned: In the modern payments industry, announcements have become a form of currency for the unserious. The gap between “we’re launching” and actual consumer adoption has never been wider, and the industry included has become too willing to treat press releases as proxies for progress.

Was I right that X would pursue payments? Absolutely. Was I wrong to think it would matter? Completely.

The deeper question isn’t whether X Money will eventually launch. It’s whether anyone will trust it when it does. Trust in financial services isn’t built through press releases and regulatory licenses—it’s earned through years of reliable, boring execution. You can’t chaos your way into custodying people’s money, and the trust required to convince users to store their savings on a platform known for its tumult may have evaporated long before the product arrives.

The time bomb we named—Now ticking louder

If X Money represents a prediction that was right in form but wrong in significance, Buy Now Pay Later represents something far more urgent: a prediction that was right in every terrifying dimension.

In February, I teased a piece titled “The BNPL Time Bomb: How ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Is Rewiring American Debt,” noting that digital payment methods like BNPL “just sound too good to be true.” By July, I published a detailed examination that laid bare what few in the industry wanted to acknowledge: BNPL had morphed from a convenient checkout option into a parallel consumer credit system operating largely in the regulatory shadows.

Let me get the record straight; anything that offers a buyer—be it consumer or small business—alternatives to traditional bank lending is a good thing. Diversity beyond banks empowers consumers and small businesses to make their own decisions around their balance sheet and offers merchants a way to accelerate sales. The concern comes from opaque, sometimes unregulated processes and potential abuse.

The data that’s emerged through 2025 is even more alarming than I anticipated. By mid-year, four in ten BNPL users had made at least one late payment—up from one in three the previous year. Klarna, one of the industry giants, reported a 17% rise in consumer credit losses in Q1 2025 compared to the prior year, totaling $136 million.

The three most common categories for BNPL purchases? Clothing, electronics, and—disturbingly—groceries.

Think about that for a moment. Groceries. We’re not talking about financing a couch or spreading out payments for a laptop. We’re talking about people using short-term credit to buy food. According to Motley Fool’s 2025 BNPL Trends Survey, 58% of BNPL users turn to the service to purchase something they couldn’t afford with traditional payment methods. Nearly 40% of Americans surveyed regret using BNPL after realizing their total cost burden.

This isn’t frictionless commerce. This is financial distress dressed up in zero-interest marketing.

The regulatory response has been a study in global fragmentation. While the UK moves toward full Financial Conduct Authority regulation by 2026—with 44% of frequent BNPL users already over-indebted before intervention—and Europe tightens affordability checks through Consumer Credit Directive 2, the United States has taken a stunningly different path.

In March 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau signaled it would rescind its interpretive rule treating BNPL providers like credit card companies under Regulation Z. The federal government, in essence, walked away from the very oversight this burgeoning $560 billion market desperately needs.

What makes this topic even more concerning is ticket sizes are going up largely driven by small businesses now using BNPL as an option for liquidity. Small business represents enormous growth potential for the BNPL industry.

Into that void have stepped individual states. New York passed its own BNPL Act in May 2025, creating the first state-level licensing regime. Other states are considering similar moves. The result? We’re heading toward a patchwork of 50 different compliance regimes that will be operationally untenable for providers and confusing for consumers—precisely the kind of fragmented regulatory environment that inevitably leads to arbitrage, confusion, and harm.

Was I right about BNPL becoming a time bomb? Yes—but perhaps I wasn’t emphatic enough. This isn’t a future crisis; it’s a present one that’s accelerating. The question for Money 2020 attendees isn’t whether to act—it’s whether we’ll act before the defaults cascade into something far more systemic.

The quantum gorilla that started moving

In February, I called quantum computing “the 800-pound gorilla in the room” that the financial services industry needed to start taking seriously. I quoted IBM’s John Duigenan predicting that when quantum computers with 100,000 qubits become generally available, they’ll solve in hours what takes classical computers a century.

Here’s what changed in eight months: The gorilla didn’t just loom—it charged.

Major financial institutions including HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank moved beyond pilots into active quantum computing deployments. The financial services quantum market is now projected to grow from $0.3 billion in 2024 to $6.3 billion by 2032 at a 46.5% compound annual growth rate.

Post-quantum cryptography standards from the National Institute of Standards and Technology aren’t being debated anymore—they’re being implemented.

What accelerated this transformation wasn’t opportunity; it was threat. “Harvest now, decrypt later” attacks—where malicious actors steal encrypted data today with the intention of decrypting it once quantum computers become powerful enough—aren’t theoretical anymore. They’re documented.

Google’s announcement of its Willow quantum chip whipsawed cryptocurrency valuations and sent a clear signal to the financial services sector: The timeline for quantum vulnerability isn’t 2030 or 2027. It’s now.

Yet quantum presents a fascinating paradox: It’s simultaneously our greatest cybersecurity vulnerability and our most powerful defense. The same quantum algorithms that could break current encryption methods can also create theoretically unbreakable quantum cryptography. Banks that treat quantum as a distant research project rather than an immediate security imperative are gambling with systemic risk.

Did I get quantum right? Mostly—though I underestimated how quickly threat perception would shift from academic concern to boardroom mandate. Any institution not mapping its quantum transition roadmap today with concrete implementation timelines isn’t just behind. It’s exposed.

The digital currency pivot we underestimated

In February, I noted that an insider at the Federal Reserve had shared that the U.S. central bank digital currency program was “on life support already” as of December 2024, questioning whether the anticipated executive order banning it would be political theater or genuine policy shift. On January 23, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order prohibiting federal agencies from establishing, issuing, or promoting CBDCs.

I called the CBDC death correctly. What I catastrophically underestimated was the strategic clarity this federal retreat would unleash for private stablecoins.

By July 2025, Congress passed the GENIUS Act establishing comprehensive stablecoin regulation. But the real story isn’t regulatory framework—it’s market dominance. Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, announced $13.7 billion in profits for 2024—a figure that would make it as profitable as Goldman Sachs.

By mid-2025, Tether’s USDT token circulation exceeded $157 billion, with $13.4 billion issued in Q2 alone. The company now holds over $127 billion in U.S. Treasuries, making it one of the largest non-sovereign buyers of T-Bills globally.

This isn’t a cryptocurrency experiment. This is a payment empire that’s routing around traditional banking infrastructure while generating profits that dwarf most regional banks. Tether’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino, announced plans to invest half of those profits—nearly $7 billion—into AI, renewable energy, telecommunications, and real estate, including $4 billion into U.S.-based initiatives.

Think about what that means: A private company issuing dollar-denominated tokens is now deploying more capital into American infrastructure than many mid-sized banks, all while operating outside traditional banking supervision. The federal government didn’t just retreat from CBDCs—it created a vacuum that private stablecoins are filling with astonishing speed and scale.

My error wasn’t the diagnosis of CBDCs’ demise. It was failing to anticipate that private stablecoins would move so aggressively to become the dollar’s digital envoy, and that their profitability would give them resources to expand far beyond payments into core economic infrastructure. As Money 2020 features a session titled “Frenemies, Friction, and the $27 Trillion Opportunity: Inside the Stablecoin Revolution,” the magnitude of this transformation becomes impossible to ignore.

The open banking collapse nobody saw coming

Perhaps my most significant blind spot was open banking. I touched on it in February, noting that “Open Banking and emerging PSD3-like policies are driving banks to open up payment infrastructure via APIs,” giving corporations more control and potentially reducing their need for legacy banking systems. What I failed to grasp was the magnitude and speed of America’s regulatory retreat while the rest of the world accelerated.

In August 2025, the CFPB vacated its 2024 Personal Financial Data Rights rule and reopened rulemaking under Section 1033—a stunning reversal. Visa discontinued its U.S. open banking services, citing disputes between banks and fintechs over data access. JPMorgan Chase and PNC Financial signaled plans to impose fees for data access, further fracturing what little market-led progress existed.

The contrast with global markets is stark. The UK reached 15 million open banking users—representing one in three adults—with 2 billion API calls per month and 36% year-over-year growth. Brazil records 4.8 billion monthly API calls, four times the UK’s volume. Seventy-eight countries now have open banking frameworks in place, serving 470 million global users in a market valued at $87 billion for 2025.

America isn’t just lagging. It’s actively regressing while the rest of the world races ahead. This isn’t merely a missed opportunity—it’s a strategic blunder that threatens U.S. payments leadership. Account-to-Account (A2A) payments have become the second-most preferred payment choice for U.S. bill payments, and they’re powered by open banking APIs that give merchants lower transaction costs by bypassing traditional card networks. Mastercard’s partnership with JPMorgan and Worldpay to scale A2A payments signals that even incumbent players recognize the existential threat to card-based revenue models.

The question for 2026 isn’t whether America can catch up. It’s whether American financial institutions can compete when European, UK, and Brazilian banks have years of API-first development, customer adoption, and data-driven innovation that U.S. banks simply don’t possess. The CFPB’s August retreat may go down as one of the most consequential regulatory decisions of the decade—and not in a good way.

The variable we all missed: Political volatility

If there’s one variable that reshaped every prediction I made in February, it’s the speed and breadth of political change’s impact on financial regulation. I noted that “politics are temporal, but can have impacts lasting decades,” and I flagged the potential for deregulation. What I failed to anticipate was how dramatically political winds would reshape regulatory reality across every dimension of payments.

The CFPB didn’t just ease off on BNPL—it walked away entirely, signaling it would rescind interpretive rules. It didn’t just slow open banking—it vacated established rules and restarted rulemaking. Meanwhile, a crypto czar was appointed with an explicit mandate to promote digital assets, and banks were ordered by executive action to provide services to cryptocurrency firms.

We’re witnessing the fracturing of American financial regulation—federal retreat creating state-by-state patchworks that will define competitive advantage and compliance complexity for the next decade. New York creates BNPL licensing. California explores data privacy rules that touch payments. States diverge on crypto regulation. What emerges isn’t coherent policy; it’s 50 different compliance regimes that will advantage large institutions capable of navigating complexity while disadvantaging smaller players and confusing consumers.

Perhaps most significantly, the political volatility variable means that strategic planning can no longer assume regulatory stability as a baseline. Banks must now develop scenario-based strategies that anticipate not just market evolution but regime shifts—changes that can happen faster than product development cycles.

Charting the road to 2026: Six imperatives that cannot wait

As Money 20/20’s attendees gather in Las Vegas next week under the theme “Create the Future,” the uncomfortable truth is that we’re still reckoning with the present. But reckoning without action is just expensive therapy. Here’s what 2026 demands:

• BNPL Intervention Before the Default Wave<
• Stablecoin Standards That Match Their Scale
• RTP Interoperability or Accept Blockchain Disruption
• Open Banking Recovery or Permanent Disadvantage
• Quantum-Safe Migration at Industrial Scale
• Adaptive Strategy for Political-Regulatory Volatility

I’ll be back later in the year with a roadmap on the above six items and much more.

What we all must confront: Can American open banking be salvaged after federal retreat, or has the CFPB’s August reversal permanently ceded leadership to Europe, UK, and Brazil? Will state-by-state BNPL regulation create 50 different compliance regimes, or will industry self-regulation preempt the chaos before consumer defaults cascade? How do stablecoins generating $13.7 billion in annual profits move from $27 trillion opportunity to properly regulated infrastructure without losing innovation velocity? When does A2A payment volume cross the threshold where traditional card networks must fundamentally restructure their economics? Is quantum security migration moving fast enough, or are we collectively underestimating threats already materializing?

These aren’t academic exercises. They’re the questions that will determine which institutions thrive and which become cautionary tales in the next decade’s business school case studies.

The uncomfortable truth: Execution over prediction

Eight months ago, I wrote that “fortune favors the bold.” I stand by that assertion—but with a critical amendment earned through watching these predictions play out in the chaos of reality. Boldness without intellectual honesty is recklessness. Being right about X’s Visa partnership means nothing when the platform still hasn’t launched. Calling BNPL a time bomb is hollow unless we push for the regulatory frameworks to defuse it—and America chose to walk away from that responsibility.

We were right about many questions: BNPL may well become a crisis. Quantum computing would accelerate from theory to tactical imperative. Digital currencies would challenge traditional banking. RTP networks would struggle with interoperability. AI would become table stakes in fraud detection.

Quantum-Safe Migration at Industrial ScaleWhat we got wrong, what I got wrong—was underestimating the answers. The speed of federal regulatory retreat. The stablecoin ascendance filling the CBDC vacuum with such force and profitability. America’s open banking collapse while the world accelerates. Political volatility as the primary variable reshaping every strategic assumption. A2A payments emerging as an existential threat to decades of card-based revenue dominance.

The institutions that thrive in 2026 won’t be those with perfect forecasts. They’ll be those with adaptive strategies that anticipate regime shifts, not just market evolution. State-by-state compliance frameworks are designed for fragmentation, not federal uniformity. Quantum roadmaps with implementation milestones, not research projects. Stablecoin integration plans that acknowledge $13.7 billion profit players aren’t going away. A2A payment strategies that respond to fundamental threats to card revenue models. Political risk assessment monitors not just regulatory changes but the political indicators that predict them.

The 2026 mandate: Build the future while acknowledging the present

As Money 2020 proceedings begin next week, I’m reminded that conferences like these can become echo chambers where we congratulate ourselves on innovation while ignoring inconvenient realities. The velocity of change I warned about in February hasn’t slowed—it’s accelerated in directions that caught even skeptics like me off guard.

The 2026 agenda isn’t about bold predictions anymore. It’s about bold execution in an environment where regulatory certainty has evaporated, political winds shift faster than product cycles, and technology evolution outpaces institutional adaptation. The window for contemplation is closed. The mandate for action is here.

Institutions treating next week’s gathering as merely networking rather than strategic reconnaissance will find themselves outmaneuvered by those who recognize we’re not just witnessing disruption—we’re living through the redefinition of money itself.

For the latest insights, analysis, and bold perspectives on where the payments industry is heading, visit KoenigsbergInsights.com. Because in an industry where change is the only constant, staying informed isn’t optional—it’s survival.

As we’ve learned in 2025: It’s not enough to see the future. We must build it—safely, soundly, and with humility to admit when prediction meets the beautiful chaos of reality.

Published by : Trade Treasury Payments