Dominic Benson and Charles Dally of Capgemini Invent on what stablecoin mainstream adoption actually looks like in practice. And the Curinos FinTech Incubator closes applications April 20.
A 12-month, zero-equity program powered by CoMotion at the University of Washington, with mentorship on product and go-to-market, CoMotion Labs workspace in Seattle, and up to $50K in Databricks credits.
Open to pre-Series A startups building in lending, credit, CX, wealth, or AI-enabled banking infrastructure, registered in the US or Canada. Rolling review is active. Earlier is better.
Final deadline: April 20, 2026. APPLY BELOW!
Applications are open for the 2026 Curinos FinTech Incubator — a 12-month, zero-equity program for early-stage fintech startups building data-driven solutions in financial services.
Powered by CoMotion at the University of Washington and backed by Curinos’ proprietary financial data and industry expertise, the program has already incubated 3 startups from its inaugural cohort — giving founders direct access to the tools, networks, and insights that financial institutions actually use.
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- Direct mentorship from Curinos leaders and industry experts
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- CoMotion Labs membership: coworking, UW resources, and startup community
- Up to $50K in Databricks credits, plus technical support and training
Who should apply:
- Early-stage fintech startups across decision intelligence, inclusion, analytics, personalization, lending, deposits, or digital banking
- Pre-Series A, legally registered in the U.S. or Canada
Regulatory activity reached 24.6%, up 10.2 points, its third consecutive rise. It now sits level with Market Signal and Business Activity as one of three dominant categories.
Product and Technology gained 8.9 points to 13% — its highest reading. Corporate fell 9.8 points to 8.7% — its lowest. New licence obtained ranked second across all categories. Regulatory enforcement or penalty ranked fifth.
Both enforcement and licensing are rising simultaneously. That combination matters. One describes companies being pushed into compliance. The other describes companies pulling toward formal regulatory structures by choice — internalising their value chains, gaining direct access to settlement infrastructure, reducing dependence on third-party banking relationships. Two different postures. Both registering as regulatory signal. Both rising.
The geographic picture produced its most significant single reading. Americas fell below 50% for the first time, dropping to 45.7%. Africa rose 8.5 points to 18.8% — within one point of Europe at 15.9%. Asia-Pacific reached 19.6%. For the first time, three geographies outside the Americas each account for more than 15% of total weighted activity.
Activity by category
Market Signal 27% · Business Activity 27% · Regulatory 25% ↑↑↑ · Product and Technology 13% ↑ · Corporate 9% ↓
Activity by geography
Americas 46% ↓ · Asia-Pacific 20% · Africa 19% ↑ · Europe 16% ↓
Company movers
Flutterwave led in new licence obtained — securing a national banking licence in Nigeria after a decade of processing over $40 billion in payments, ending its dependence on third-party banks for settlement and gaining the ability to hold deposits and issue loans directly.
Monzo led in geographic expansion. Ripple led in new product launches.
Toss led in blockchain and tokenization — the South Korean super app serving roughly 30 million users is internally evaluating a proprietary blockchain network and native token, has filed 24 Korean won stablecoin trademarks, and has been hiring blockchain engineers since February.
Revolut’s activity was led by regulatory enforcement, following a penalty exceeding €11 million from Italy’s competition authority for misleading investment disclosures.
Watch: The last Watch asked whether the regulatory surge was enforcement alone or a structural shift. This reading answers it — both enforcement and licensing are rising, from two different companies with opposite regulatory postures.
Regulatory activity has now moved in every reading since the FLAIR 200 launched: 5%, 6.5%, 14.4%, 24.6%.The next reading will show whether legislative signal enters the data alongside enforcement and licensing. If it does, 24.6% will not be the peak.
Africa reached 18.8% of weighted activity — within one point of Europe, which fell to 15.9%. The Americas dropped below 50% for the first time since the index launched. Three geographies outside the Americas now each account for more than 15% of total weighted activity.
The number behind Africa’s surge is Flutterwave’s Nigerian banking licence. After a decade of processing over $40 billion in payments through third-party banking infrastructure, the company now controls its own settlement rails directly. It can hold deposits. It can issue loans. The intermediaries are gone.
What makes this more than a single corporate milestone is the context around it. Paystack completed the same step three months earlier. Nigeria’s central bank brought both of its largest payment infrastructure companies inside the formal banking system in the same quarter. That is a policy decision. A regulator that moves that deliberately is building something structural, not just processing applications.
The “emerging market” framing has always undersold what African fintech is constructing. The infrastructure decisions being made in Lagos right now — who controls settlement, who holds deposits, who issues credit — are the same decisions that determined which institutions became systemically significant in American and European finance a generation ago. The difference is speed. And far less legacy infrastructure standing in the way.
— Rosalia Mazza
The two largest stablecoins now carry a combined market capitalisation of $260 billion, three times their 2023 value. The GENIUS Act gave stablecoins a legal definition. Banks are issuing their own. Payment processors are piloting stablecoin settlement inside global checkout APIs. A global messaging platform integrated a stablecoin into its in-app wallet for peer-to-peer payments.
Their argument on agentic commerce is the sharpest observation in the piece. AI agents currently face friction at the point of payment — credit card authorisation, user verification. Stablecoins remove that friction. The implication for card issuers is structural, not marginal.
The piece ends with a timeline and a framework for where organisations should start. For any fintech professional making infrastructure decisions in the next twelve months, it is worth reading in full.
Read the full piece on FinTech Weekly: Why 2026 Could Be the Year Stablecoins Go Mainstream — by Dominic Benson and Charles Dally, Capgemini Invent.
What does a regulatory environment where enforcement and licensing are rising simultaneously mean for how you are allocating compliance resources right now? Reply to [email protected]
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