FinTech TV Host: Welcome to FinTech TV. For years, traditional financial institutions took a measured and cautious approach to digital assets, prioritizing rigorous risk management as well as regulatory clarity. Now today that deliberate evaluation is translating into active institutional integration. Now according to a comprehensive study conducted with American Banker, 3 out of 4 US banks now have digital asset initiatives underway, and critically, mainstream institutions are moving beyond the exploration phase, with 2/3 allocating dedicated infrastructure budgets and over half issuing formal RFPs for tech partners. Well joining us live from Money 2020 is Robin O'Connell, who is CEO of Enterprise at Uphold. Robin, great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me.
Robin O'Connell: Great to see you again. Thanks for having me.
FinTech TV Host: Well, we're live on the ground here in Las Vegas, and what a Money 2020 it has been. I know that Uphold had a blockchain summit on day one of this event. So give us a sense of what's different this year compared to last.
Robin O'Connell: Thank you. Yeah, it's, it's been a sea change, really. About a year ago, you know, it was more about stablecoins and crypto, and now it's really about just moving finance and financial products on chain, and that was really what our on-chain summit was really about. One of the big reveals was the American Banker survey that you were referring to, which was conducted over the summer, and about 100 banks, large, small, responded and really, you know, reported on what activities they were doing, and the number is pretty staggering. I mean, large banks, sure, but small banks, credit unions, community banks, the number is about 75% of those banks are already initiating digital assets initiatives. So it's a big deal for us because we're the infrastructure behind that. And the conversations have been, you know, really, really solid.
FinTech TV Host: And of course we are also hearing about how when it comes to the retail consumer out there, we do want to get to a point where they don't even have to think about what's under the surface in terms of the technology. But we've also been hearing a lot about artificial intelligence. So given your perspective over at Uphold, what role does agentic AI play in all of this?
Robin O'Connell: It's really exciting and it adds a whole another layer to all of this. I mean, right at the time where banks are just figuring out, you know, how to move their dollars on chain through tokenized deposits, but now other financial products, money market funds, etc., that really enables or releases the possibilities for AI. And so the way we're thinking about it is we want to have a system where of course there'll always be the user interface and the importance of that, and we want to be the rails making it possible to easily move all of these financial tokenized assets 24/7, 365, seamless. And the end user, whether it's a business or a consumer, doesn't really have to know that, right? It's just better finance, or better rails for finance. But we do also have to think about a world where the user experience doesn't necessarily, necessarily go the way of the past where you're on a website or on an app, and we believe that we're not that far away from individuals, say from a wealth management standpoint, having a very personalized experience through AI where they can, where AI knows everything about them and can optimize their money. And so if you have all of the financial products, the highest yield that they can be generating, the tokenization of what assets they have that can be the collateral that they can borrow against, all of these things, and the third and important one is getting access to financial products that otherwise someone might not be able to get access to, like private equity, etc. And so if all these things become available, then you can imagine a world where people are accessing these services through AI, and I think the banks have to be thinking about that. And so they have to be ready to operate within that world. We as a company are thinking that way. I think many of the fintechs are, and opening it up to these possibilities because it's moving fast.
FinTech TV Host: Yeah, and speaking of everything moving quickly, we're here at the end of 2026, which is hard to believe, and of course there has been a lot of focus on the regulatory landscape for consumer protection, as well as guardrails when we're talking about new tech, whether it's just digital assets or artificial intelligence. So, at Uphold, what is your perspective on the regulatory outlook?
Robin O'Connell: So, first of all, we're highly regulated, like a bank is regulated, and that's been in our DNA from the get-go. Our compliance team is the second largest group within our organization. So we're regulated in the United States, UK, and Europe, expanding our footprint. But if we're talking about the United States, you know, basically digital assets have been operated at a state-by-state level. There's some companies that, you know, are looking to basically get bank charters themselves. We're looking at all of these things, but, you know, at the end of the day, compliance is so important, and that's where, you know, we kind of have our roots, if you will. I think with the Clarity Act and the Genius Act, you know, I don't think anything's slowed down because the Clarity Act hasn't passed yet. You know, the SEC, the CFTC, they all have guardrails and are putting out their frameworks. So nothing's really slowing down from that perspective, but, you know, it is something you're always keeping an eye on.
FinTech TV Host: Yeah. And of course, Robin, while I have you here, I do want to ask you to give us your perspective on your competitive advantage over at Uphold and what trends you're paying attention to heading into 2027.
Robin O'Connell: We think our competitive advantage is we have sort of two sides to the house. We have a retail side of the business, and then we have an enterprise side of the business. I run the enterprise side of the business, but I think that's what makes us special because we have battle-tested all of our services over 12 years and that's, you're no longer just, say, a startup at that point, right? We've served, you know, tens of millions of customers, billions of dollars of transactions, you know, and we have an amazing stack from the payments layer to the blockchain wallet layer to the compliance layer, and, you know, all of those things exist in different forms. A bank, for instance, can sort of pick and choose and say, OK, well I want to work with this custodian or this liquidity provider and kind of put all those pieces together. We have all of those pieces, and so it can kind of be like a puzzle where you say, well, let's figure out what pieces of the puzzle you need to bring together and that's basically what we do and I think that makes us, it gives us a better advantage.
FinTech TV Host: And very quickly in terms of trends you're paying attention to as we head into the new year.
Robin O'Connell: Well, it's really what I touched upon before. It's the movement, it's the creation of financial assets and moving those on chain or taking existing financial assets and moving them on chain, which creates better liquidity, better access, 24/7, 365 access, which creates a whole new set of possibilities. That's what's really exciting. And then ultimately you take all of that and you make it programmable, right? So we've always been talking about, well, what's the beauty of blockchain? It's programmable money. Well now with AI, there you go. It's a merging of these two phenomenal new technologies, and I think we've got a lot of exciting things that are gonna be happening.
FinTech TV Host: Well, Robin, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining us here at Money 20/20 in Vegas. Appreciate you as well as all of your insights today.
Robin O'Connell: Thank you.
