Fintech Leaders on Go-To-Market Strategy
Product executives in fintech emphasize that go-to-market success now depends on building robust bank and fintech partnerships, according to a recent discussion. Leaders recommend investing early in regulatory intelligence and scenario planning, as launch timelines are often dictated by evolving guidance on topics like real-time payments and authentication.
- The Clearing House's RTP network saw payment value jump 195% to $481 billion in Q2 2025 after raising its transaction limit to $10 million in February 2025. This increase caused the average payment size to grow 376% from $842 in January to over $4,000 by June. - As of January 2026, the FedNow service has enrolled over 1,600 financial institutions, surpassing the RTP network's 1,135 participants. However, RTP still leads in total payment value, processing over $1.3 trillion in 2025 compared to FedNow's $853.4 billion. - To influence without direct authority, product leaders are advised to build credibility by grounding strategies in data, linking plans to company objectives, and clearly communicating their reasoning to stakeholders. Building strong relationships through active listening and understanding cross-functional constraints is foundational to gaining trust and buy-in. - AI is being practically applied in financial services to enhance credit underwriting by analyzing alternative data points like payment histories and spending behavior to issue decisions in minutes. For fraud prevention, AI-driven systems can monitor transactions in real-time to identify anomalies, with some platforms achieving detection accuracy rates of up to 95%. - Network tokenization is a key innovation in digital identity and fraud prevention, replacing a card's 16-digit number with a unique token that is useless to fraudsters if stolen in a data breach. This technology is being combined with on-device authentication, such as biometrics, and one-time cryptograms to further secure transactions. - A significant trend in banking is the shift from competition to collaboration with fintechs through embedded finance partnerships, where banks offer their licensed services via APIs to non-financial companies. This allows banks to reduce customer acquisition costs and access new revenue streams, with the global embedded finance market projected to reach $1.73 trillion by 2034. - In cross-border payments, initiatives like Immediate Cross-Border Payments (IXB) are being developed to link domestic real-time payment systems, such as those in the U.S. and Europe, to enable faster and more transparent international transactions. - Regulatory clarity is accelerating institutional adoption of stablecoins, with legislation like the proposed GENIUS Act in the U.S. and the enacted MiCA framework in Europe providing clear rules for issuers. This is prompting banks to explore issuing their own stablecoins for use in settlement, liquidity, and treasury operations.
