We officially have 72 demos on stage at this year’s FinovateFall conference, taking place September 9 through 11 at the Marriott Marquis in New York (book now!). This year’s lineup is a nice mix of startups with established players, and with all demos running on a single track, you won’t miss a thing. This concentrated format makes it easy to spot the patterns shaping bank roadmaps for the next 12 to 18 months.
Here’s a look at what trends lie ahead, based on what we’re seeing across this year’s demo companies.
AI gets to work
It will come as no surprise that AI is the most prominent enabling technology on the FinovateFall stage this year. What’s more interesting is that this year’s demo companies are showing that the industry has evolved its use of AI to tackle specific jobs that are expensive, repetitive, time consuming, or difficult to scale.
In wealth management, AdvisorHelpAI, Covecta, GPTAdvisor, Nextvestment, Mobena, and Valcori Automated Solutions are using technology to augment advisors, improve planning, organize institutional knowledge, or streamline the work that happens around client relationships. CUltivate AI, LemonadeLXP, and ScreenSteps are focused on the employee side of the equation, helping financial institution staff learn, find information, and navigate complex processes more efficiently. Inbenta, Titan AI, Tweezr, Birdie AI, and Hamming AI similarly point toward a future in which AI is embedded into service and operational workflows rather than living in a standalone chatbot.
The same shift is happening with data. Pyramid Solutions, Data City, Preql AI, and Ventus AI are helping organizations extract more useful intelligence from the data they already have, while Go.AI allows financial institutions to use AI while maintaining greater control over their data, models, and outputs.
Banks are slowly realizing that they can outsource a wide range of tasks to AI, and fintechs are making that possible.
Agentic AI moves deeper into financial operations
The next evolution is already visible as fintechs begin building technology capable of taking action.
Saris AI is building agents to automate lending, compliance, and operations tasks, while Rexi applies an agentic layer to transaction matching, reconciliation, and discrepancy resolution. Palomonte Labs is building infrastructure that makes financial APIs understandable and executable by AI agents, and Tacnode is tackling the data layer by giving agents access to shared, real-time context.
Agentic concepts are showing up in more specialized areas, too. Vertice AI is applying autonomous capabilities to marketing campaign planning and execution, while Transvision Solutions uses autonomous AI to conduct AML investigations. Kita Technologies deploys multiple specialized agents across the lending process. Voyager AI similarly brings intelligence to document collection, spreading, underwriting, compliance, and credit memo preparation.
The first generation of agentic banking may be much less visible to consumers than other developments have been. Rather than immediately handing an AI agent control over a customer’s entire financial life, financial institutions appear more interested in deploying specialized agents with narrowly defined jobs, permissions, data, and guardrails.
Fintech targets operating leverage
One of the more interesting themes in this year’s lineup has less to do with a particular technology and more to do with the outcome fintechs are promising. Many are seeking to help financial institutions accomplish more without adding equivalent amounts of headcount, cost, or complexity.
This becomes very clear when we look at the lending subsector. ALoan is automating commercial underwriting and credit memo preparation, while QuickFi digitizes commercial equipment financing from application through final payment. Kato uses automation to lower the cost of servicing and collections, Veritus deploys AI voice and text agents across lending and collections, and Vertyx automates servicing workflows after mortgage close. Donevia adds an intelligence and engagement layer to existing lending infrastructure rather than requiring institutions to replace their LOS.
Other companies are attacking operational friction from different angles. MHC automates documents, payments, and customer communications, while Naehas automates regulated offers, disclosures, and marketing processes. Loquat brings onboarding, lending, cards, and back-office lifecycle management together for community financial institutions. Finerative, Horizon AI, FFERM Technologies, and adapfin Technologies are also addressing specialized areas where better technology can streamline decision-making or financial operations.
Even Delfi Labs, which operates in capital markets rather than traditional bank operations, reflects the same underlying theme by using AI-guided analytics and streamlined execution to help community financial institutions make balance-sheet decisions more efficiently.
This is a notable shift from an earlier era of fintech, when some of the industry’s most visible innovations centered on making banking look and feel better. Smoother onboarding and cleaner interfaces still matter, but much of this year’s technology is focused on making the institution itself operate better.
Customer engagement gets tied to outcomes
Customer engagement and financial wellness remain prominent on the demo stage, but this year’s companies are increasingly connecting them to measurable behaviors and business outcomes.
BankUniverse uses intent signals to identify high-value prospects and improve digital conversion, while Finalytics.ai uses behavioral, transactional, and third-party data to create segment-of-one experiences. Tapix enriches raw payment data to create the clean merchant and transaction information needed to power better analytics and personalization. Omnisient adds another dimension by enabling privacy-preserving collaboration around consumer data, and Radar uses location intelligence not only for fraud prevention, but also to help companies engage users in context.
Other companies are connecting financial wellness more directly to action. Doshi combines gamified financial education with product-readiness signals, while GenAspire uses teen banking and financial literacy as an acquisition strategy for community financial institutions. Young Early Starters combines education with real, parent-approved investing, and On Time Harvest pairs cash-flow forecasting and behavioral insights with financial education and planning.
Perqia uses incentives timed to borrower cash flow to encourage loan repayment. Clockout connects financial wellness and liquidity tools to direct-deposit growth and engagement. And Goodbuy turns community commerce into a channel designed to drive account activation, deposits, card usage, and interchange.
Even lending and payments are becoming more contextual. equipifi brings personalized BNPL and flexible payments into the digital banking relationship, while OptimaFI uses household-level intelligence and peer benchmarking to identify growth and risk opportunities.
The common thread is that engagement is now focused on influencing what happens next instead of generating clicks.
Infrastructure takes center stage
Much of the technology on the FinovateFall stage will be the infrastructure that consumers never see.
Payments provide a good example. 3 Degrees enables community banks and credit unions to embed cross-border payments, while Finzly provides infrastructure for banks to process payments across rails including ACH, Fedwire, RTP, SWIFT, and FedNow. Neural Payments connects financial institutions to multiple payment rails and wallets through a single branded integration. Paywhere and Tyfone also illustrate the continued evolution of the technology connecting financial institutions, payments, and digital banking experiences.
Glide combines digital account opening, lending, onboarding, identity verification, fraud detection, and funding, demonstrating another important infrastructure trend: financial institutions increasingly want capabilities that can slot into their existing environments rather than require wholesale replacement.
Security and trust are becoming part of that infrastructure, as well. Darwinium continuously evaluates digital behavior to identify fraud across customer journeys, while Illuma applies voice authentication to contact-center security. SLC Digital focuses on secure digital authentication and account-takeover prevention, and Quavo Fraud & Disputes tackles the operational infrastructure surrounding fraud and disputes.
McCarthy Hatch applies AI to regulatory risk by analyzing customer complaints, while RangersAI moves fraud prevention closer to the customer with real-time scam education and intervention. Warrant and Root represent other approaches to establishing trust and managing risk as financial services become increasingly digital.
And some infrastructure is aimed at expanding what financial institutions can offer in the first place. Blytz, Cosmos, and FinZee AI illustrate just how broadly the definition of financial technology continues to stretch, from new forms of financial interaction to technologies that connect financial behavior with other sources of context.
In a broad sense, many of this year’s fintechs aren’t trying to replace the bank or even become the customer’s primary financial interface. This new breed is building the intelligence, automation, security, payments, data, and workflow layers that allow existing financial institutions to modernize.
What’s missing?
For a demo lineup this large, almost every corner of fintech has some representation. Still, one of today’s loudest industry conversations is surprisingly quiet.
Stablecoins have moved squarely into mainstream conversations about payments, settlement, and banking infrastructure, but there isn’t a corresponding wave of stablecoin issuers, tokenized-deposit platforms, crypto custody providers, or blockchain companies on the demo stage. This is a reflection of the fact that regulatory frameworks like those established by the GENIUS Act and proposed under the CLARITY Act are still taking shape, and many traditional banks are hesitant to jump into decentralized finance without established regulatory guidelines.
Overall, this year’s demos point toward a fintech industry that is becoming less focused on novelty and more focused on execution. AI is being tasked with real work, agents are beginning to execute defined processes, infrastructure is drawing attention, and customer engagement is increasingly being tied to measurable outcomes.
The flashy front-end experience hasn’t disappeared, but much of the innovation at FinovateFall 2026 will be happening behind it. And for banks planning their next 12 to 18 months of technology investment, that may be the trend that matters most.
Photo by crazy motions
