Introduction
IOSG says crypto is moving from the edge of fintech into its core infrastructure. In the report, Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, Mastercard’s roughly $2 billion acquisition of Zerohash, and Robinhood’s launch of its own L2 are presented as parts of the same shift: large fintech firms are embedding blockchain infrastructure, stablecoins and decentralized finance rails directly into their main products.
The report argues that fintech reshaped payments, banking and investing over the past decade through software-native platforms and digital distribution. The next phase, it says, has already started. Crypto is becoming the backend.
IOSG reviews 10 major fintech companies and focuses on their business models, revenue drivers, and the way they are integrating crypto payments and DeFi infrastructure. Its core conclusion is that the strongest companies are not using crypto primarily as a speculative asset. They are using it as backend infrastructure to speed settlement, reduce costs and extend global financial connectivity. Stablecoins, in that framework, are becoming the bridge between traditional financial systems and onchain markets.
A shared view of digital finance
IOSG summarizes the common foundation across the 10 companies this way: financial services should be borderless, real time, software-defined and composable, while compliance should remain largely invisible to end users.
From there, the opportunity looks different depending on the type of company.
Infrastructure players
Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Adyen are grouped as infrastructure players. Their basic premise is to rebuild the pipes that move money without owning the direct customer relationship. The opportunity, according to the report, grows with every new payment rail, whether that is stablecoins, account-to-account transfers or instant payments. Crypto enters the picture through stablecoins that can reduce settlement friction and enable 24/7 treasury management.
Consumer platforms
Nu, Revolut, PayPal and Cash App are described as consumer platform companies. Their aim is to become the main financial gateway for users and increase lifetime value by combining banking, payments, investing and crypto inside one app. For these firms, crypto is often another engagement and monetization layer, through trading fees, yield-bearing products and cross-border services.
Hybrid models
Robinhood, Block and SoFi are presented as hybrid players. IOSG says these firms are trying to integrate consumer products and infrastructure ownership at the same time, capturing profit across several layers, including retail activity, B2B infrastructure and asset custody. Their crypto approach is two-sided: user distribution on one side, infrastructure control on the other.
The main patterns IOSG sees
Infrastructure first, speculation second
One of the clearest findings in the report is that nearly all of the companies studied treat crypto as backend infrastructure rather than a front-end speculative product. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Adyen are using stablecoins to upgrade the settlement layer while leaving the consumer experience mostly unchanged. IOSG’s point is simple: crypto works best when it becomes invisible.
Stablecoins as the bridge asset
The report says every company that touches crypto is, in some form, betting on stablecoins as the transition layer between traditional finance and crypto markets. It lists several examples:
- Visa is settling with USDC on Solana and has more than 130 stablecoin card programs.
- Mastercard is working across four stablecoins, USDC, PYUSD, USDG and FIUSD, on multiple chains.
- Robinhood is partnering with USDG and sharing revenue.
- PayPal issued PYUSD and is internalizing part of the settlement layer.
- Stripe uses USDC for cross-border merchant payouts.
IOSG says stablecoins can compress settlement times, cut FX friction and support programmable money management without taking on price volatility exposure.
Regulated distribution as the moat
For large user-facing platforms, the report says the moat is not technical novelty. It is trust, compliance and distribution at scale. It points to PayPal’s 400 million users, Revolut’s 50 million-plus, Nu’s 122 million and Cash App’s 58 million. These companies, in IOSG’s framing, act as compliant onramps and offramps rather than protocol builders.
DeFi as wholesale infrastructure, not a retail interface
IOSG says none of the companies in its sample expose native DeFi protocols directly to mainstream retail users. Instead, DeFi sits in the background as wholesale infrastructure: a source of yield, a tool for liquidity optimization, or the engine under regulated savings products. In other words, DeFi is being used to power regulated financial products, not to define the user experience itself.
The rise of a multi-rail strategy
The report says companies are increasingly building infrastructure that is not tied to any single payment method. Stripe’s view, as described by IOSG, is that whichever rail wins, it wants to own the programmable money layer. Mastercard is framed as a multi-rail company spanning cards, A2A transfers, real-time payments and blockchain. Adyen is described as a global operating system for enterprise payments.
As payments fragment across cards, A2A, stablecoins and BNPL, IOSG argues that the winners will be companies that can route intelligently across all of them.
Which business models scale, and which ones break
The tollbooth model of payment networks
IOSG describes Visa and Mastercard as examples of a highly scalable model: near-zero marginal cost per transaction, heavy fixed-cost leverage and network effects that are hard to challenge. Each new transaction adds revenue with very little incremental cost.
The report notes that stablecoins and A2A payments could, in theory, bypass card networks. The response from Visa and Mastercard, it says, is to position themselves as the network above networks, sitting across all rails, including crypto.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service
Stripe and Adyen are highlighted as Infrastructure-as-a-Service businesses. Once embedded into a merchant’s technical stack, switching becomes difficult. Revenue compounds as merchants grow, and additional products such as fraud tools, tax services and billing raise ARPU over time.
The report states that Stripe processed $1.4 trillion in 2024, equal to about 1.3% of global GDP. IOSG describes Stripe’s Bridge and Tempo strategy as one of the most aggressive infrastructure plays in the market. If stablecoin payments continue to scale, Stripe could capture the developer layer of crypto-native commerce.
Recurring revenue and float income
IOSG argues that reserve income from stablecoins, staking rewards and subscriptions are structurally more stable than trading commissions. It cites Coinbase’s USDC income of $332.5 million in 2025 Q4. Revenue lines tied to AUM or AUC expansion, the report says, are more predictable than revenue tied only to transaction volume.
Low-cost digital banking in underserved markets
Nubank is used as the example here. IOSG says its monthly servicing cost is only $0.80, compared with $5 to more than $10 for traditional banks. Monthly active rates are above 83%, and net interest margin is 17.7%. In underbanked markets, the report says, customer acquisition can spread almost virally. Nu’s customer base has reached 122.7 million, with broad cross-sell room on top.
Models with higher risk or weaker scalability
The report identifies several business models that it sees as more fragile.
- Pure dependence on trading fees. If more than 90% of revenue comes from trading commissions, the business becomes highly exposed to market cycles. IOSG says trading volume can fall 70% to 90% in a crypto bear market. It notes that Coinbase’s trading revenue mix fell from 96% in 2020 to an expected 59% in 2025, while Robinhood now has 11 business lines.
- Reliance on PFOF. Payment for order flow has been banned in the European Union and remains under scrutiny in the US. The report says that makes it a serious regulatory risk for companies built around it. Better alternatives, in IOSG’s view, are subscriptions, net interest income and institutional clients.
- Crypto businesses with no sticky recurring revenue. An exchange that relies only on spot trading fees, without staking, stablecoin reserve income, custody, DeFi protocol revenue or subscriptions, is described as deeply cyclical. The better model, the report says, layers several revenue lines together.
- Bitcoin revenue with little profit. IOSG cites Block’s 2025 Q3 bitcoin revenue of $1.97 billion and bitcoin revenue cost of $1.89 billion, implying gross margin of roughly 4% on the BTC channel. That boosts top-line revenue but contributes little gross profit. The strategic value, it says, lies more in ecosystem lock-in than direct profitability.
How major fintech firms are integrating crypto
Stablecoin integration is the most common path
IOSG says stablecoin integration is both the most common and the strongest-growing path across the group.
- Visa is building USDC settlement into its network.
- Mastercard is working with OKX on card products and acquired Zerohash.
- PayPal issued PYUSD, which the report says has a circulating supply of $3.6 billion, and supports DeFi use.
- Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion to orchestrate stablecoin flows and is building Tempo L1.
- Coinbase is a co-issuer or partner around USDC, with expected stablecoin revenue of $1.4 billion in 2025.
Turning crypto trading into a product feature
Another common route is to make crypto trading part of the main product stack. IOSG points to Robinhood’s native integration of crypto with stocks and options, Revolut’s support for trading more than 200 tokens in-app, Nubank’s NuCripto, and Block or Cash App’s bitcoin buy, sell and transfer functions. The report says this is relatively cheap to add, can capture retail demand in bull markets, and can also deepen user retention.
Building proprietary blockchain infrastructure
Some firms are now going further and building their own chains. IOSG cites Coinbase’s Base Chain, an L2 based on the OP Stack; Stripe’s Tempo, an L1 built with Paradigm; and Robinhood Chain, an Arbitrum-based L2. The report says owning the chain means owning economics such as sequencer fees, MEV and ecosystem network effects. It compares that to Visa building VisaNet instead of depending on a third-party network.
Block’s full-stack bitcoin strategy
Block’s approach is described as a full-stack bitcoin strategy, stretching from the Cash App consumer wallet to merchant acceptance through Square Bitcoin and Lightning, then to self-custody through Bitkey, mining through Proto and open-source development through Spiral. IOSG says this is a high-conviction vertical bet. If bitcoin becomes an everyday payments rail, Block would have exposure at every layer. If not, it is a large strategic commitment with uncertain payoff.
Custody and institutional services
On the institutional side, the report says Coinbase Prime is custodian for most US spot bitcoin and ether ETFs. Mastercard and Visa, meanwhile, are described as providers of compliance, KYC and AML layers for institutional crypto adoption. IOSG says institutional capital needs trusted, regulated custody, making this a high-barrier and potentially high-margin business.
DeFi access and protocol participation
The report also points to DeFi-linked distribution and participation. PayPal’s PYUSD can be used for DeFi lending and trading on Ethereum. Coinbase’s Base Chain hosts DeFi protocols, while USDC remains the leading stablecoin in DeFi. Revolut and Robinhood are both cited for ETH and SOL staking services.
Integration opportunities in crypto payments and DeFi
Upstream opportunities: wholesale and infrastructure
IOSG first highlights stablecoin settlement networks, where stablecoins are used for interbank settlement, treasury management and merchant payouts. The report says this can compress settlement from T+2 to near real time and reduce correspondent banking costs. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Adyen are named as beneficiaries, with Visa’s USDC settlement of VisaNet obligations on Solana offered as an example.
The second upstream opportunity is to use tokenized money market instruments as liquid reserves. IOSG mentions tokenized Treasuries such as Ondo OUSG and Franklin OnChain. The appeal, according to the report, is that they can generate yield without sacrificing liquidity or adding credit risk. PayPal, Nu, Revolut and SoFi are listed as beneficiaries, and Mastercard MTN’s support for tokenized Treasury assets is cited as an example.
The third is cross-border remittance rails. The report says stablecoin rails can replace SWIFT or correspondent banking for both B2B and consumer transfers, delivering instant settlement, lower fees and better FX execution. Stripe, PayPal through Xoom, Revolut and Nu are all included in that theme.
The fourth is a programmable compliance layer. IOSG describes this as contract-based AML, KYC, transaction monitoring and sanctions screening that automates compliance, reduces manual workload and supports real-time risk scoring. All regulated players could benefit, and the report specifically mentions Visa Protect for A2A payments and Mastercard Crypto Secure.
Downstream opportunities: retail and merchant products
At the downstream level, the report starts with stablecoin-linked cards, where users spend directly from stablecoin balances and conversion into fiat happens at the point of sale. Visa and Mastercard provide the infrastructure layer, while Revolut and Cash App act as distributors. Examples include Visa’s more than 130 stablecoin card programs and the Mastercard OKX Card.
Another category is crypto-backed lending. IOSG says these products let users borrow fiat against crypto collateral without triggering a taxable event. Robinhood, SoFi, Block and Revolut are all listed under this theme.
Yield-bearing savings products are another area. The report says these can be delivered through a regulated wrapper while sourcing yield from tokenized Treasuries or DeFi lending protocols. Nu, Revolut, PayPal and SoFi are named as beneficiaries. Revolut’s crypto earn-style products are cited as examples, with returns close to staking yield.
For merchants, IOSG says settlement in stablecoins instead of fiat can reduce FX risk and speed payouts. Stripe, Adyen, Square and PayPal are listed, while Mastercard’s work with Nuvei and Circle to let merchants settle in USDC, PYUSD or USDG is given as an example.
The report also flags instant cross-border P2P remittance as a major retail use case. Stablecoin-powered transfers, it says, can arrive in seconds at fees below 1%, putting pressure on Western Union and MoneyGram in Latin America and Asia. The beneficiaries listed are PayPal through Xoom, Revolut, Cash App and Nu. One example in the report is Nu enabling BRL to USDC to local currency transfers in Latin America.
Differentiated, higher-margin niche opportunities
IOSG also outlines several narrower opportunities.
One is Self-Custody Wallet-as-a-Service for institutions and high-net-worth users. The idea is a white-label self-custody product that can generate custody fees while satisfying self-custody compliance demands. Block’s Bitkey hardware wallet is used as an example, and Robinhood, Block and Stripe are all tied to this theme.
Another is blockchain-based loyalty programs, where points are issued as tokens and become portable across ecosystems. The report says that can improve user retention and create new revenue streams from tokenized rewards. Mastercard, Visa and PayPal are listed here.
A third is institutional DeFi protocol integration. IOSG says the opportunity is large: compliant middleware that gives institutions regulated access to DeFi lending, staking and liquidity mining. SoFi through Galileo, Stripe through Bridge and Mastercard through MTN are placed in this category. The report points to SoFi Galileo offering white-label crypto staking to banks as one example.
The final niche area it highlights is privacy-preserving payments. IOSG says zero-knowledge technology could support stablecoin transfers that remain private while still meeting AML requirements, making confidential corporate payments possible inside a compliant framework.
A structural view: who wins in rebundling
The report connects its fintech analysis to another study, The Architecture of Value: Structural Evolution of Financial Innovation and Deep Dive Report on Venture Capital Strategies, and uses that lens to look at financial rebundling.
IOSG says the durable winners in rebundling are more likely to be infrastructure providers than consumer platforms. Infrastructure players such as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Adyen are described as having gross margins of 90% to 98% and operating margins of 50% to 62%, with almost no customer acquisition cost. Their moats come from network effects or developer lock-in, and revenue grows as the ecosystem expands rather than through direct user acquisition.
Consumer platforms such as Robinhood, Nu, Revolut and PayPal look different. The report puts their gross margins at 30% to 50%, operating margins at 10% to 25%, and customer acquisition cost at $200 to $450. They often need users to adopt at least three products before the economics work, and they are more exposed to regulatory changes and market cycles.
IOSG uses one comparison to make the point: Visa earns 97.8% gross margin on $17 trillion in payment volume, while Robinhood’s crypto trading revenue is cyclical by nature.
Three critical dependencies
The report says success in rebundling depends on three factors.
The first is funding source, with a banking license described as a compounding moat. IOSG cites Nu’s $19 billion in deposits, funding cost of 3% to 4% and lending net interest margin of 17.7%. SoFi also benefits from being able to gather deposits through its bank charter. By contrast, PayPal does not have a banking license and cannot take deposits, while Revolut’s delayed UK banking license weakens its ability to compete in lending. The report adds that without a bank license, consumer fintech firms can be trapped by BaaS partners, as seen in the 2024 Synapse collapse, or lose the ability to internalize deposit-to-loan spread economics.
The second is cross-sell economics. IOSG gives a simple comparison: a one-product user generates $50 in annual revenue and $150 in lifetime value, which does not work against a CAC of $200 to $450. A three-product user, with $180 in annual revenue and $540 in lifetime value, is where the model starts to make money. Success stories listed include Robinhood with 11 products and ARPU of $191, up 82% year on year; Revolut with 298% growth in wealth revenue; and Nu with 83% cross-product MAU. The weaker example is PayPal, which has 400 million users but many of them use it only for checkout, with Venmo, crypto and savings proving harder to cross-sell.
The third is developer or enterprise lock-in through integration depth. IOSG says a merchant that has integrated Stripe Billing, Tax, Connect and Radar would need more than six months of engineering work to remove it. Every added product raises switching cost again. Visa’s structure works differently but leads to the same result: 20,000 banks compete for customers while all relying on Visa’s protocol, making the network itself the product.
For consumer crypto specifically, the report says the structural challenges remain serious: custody responsibility, compressed margins such as Uniswap at 0.3% versus Coinbase at 1% to 2%, weak lock-in because users can withdraw into self-custody, and strong cyclicality. IOSG notes that Coinbase’s revenue fell 75% from 2022 to 2023.
Investment themes: building the Stripe or Visa of stablecoins
From this framework, IOSG says the real opportunity in crypto is to build compliant middleware that hides blockchain complexity from businesses and fintechs — in its words, the Stripe or Visa of stablecoins.
Investment theme 1: stablecoin orchestration
Stripe’s $1.1 billion purchase of Bridge, the report says, shows that enterprises want stablecoin settlement but do not want to run nodes, manage wallets or deal with licensing across all 50 US states. The winning product, in IOSG’s view, would be a single API that handles multichain routing, liquidity optimization, compliance screening and tax reporting. A business would call one transfer endpoint and the infrastructure would do the rest.
Economically, the report models this as a 0.5% to 1% take rate on very large payment volume, with near-zero marginal cost per transaction and high switching costs once integrated. IOSG frames that as a 90%-plus gross margin model applied to a stablecoin settlement market of more than $2 trillion.
Investment theme 2: Vault-as-a-Service
The second theme is Vault-as-a-Service, which IOSG compares to AWS for crypto custody. It notes that PayPal, Robinhood and Nu each custody billions of dollars in crypto assets, while modern custody requires OCC compliance, MPC or HSM security, insurance of more than $100 million and disaster recovery capabilities.
The opportunity, according to the report, is to offer custody infrastructure through APIs: key management, policy engines such as three approvals for withdrawals over $100,000, compliance reporting and OFAC screening. Any fintech that adds crypto could need this. IOSG says the model comes with zero CAC in the traditional retail sense and high retention, because switching custodians can trigger more than 12 months of security audits. The report names Fireblocks, valued at $8 billion, Anchorage Digital with its OCC charter, and Copper.co as examples.
Investment theme 3: DeFi middleware and the vault curator layer
The third theme is DeFi middleware. IOSG says the market is still missing a Stripe for DeFi yield — a layer that can aggregate yield across Aave, Compound, Morpho and tokenized Treasuries such as Ondo OUSG, while abstracting gas fees, producing IRS-compliant 1099 tax forms, and wrapping the whole thing in insurance and compliance.
The report points to several ingredients in that stack: Ondo Finance and tokenized Treasuries with 5% yield, Backed Finance and tokenized corporate debt, and Maple or Goldfinch in institutionally underwritten DeFi lending.
Its concrete example is SoFi. If SoFi holds billions of dollars in deposits and traditional accounts yield only 0% to 1%, IOSG says its B2B platform Galileo could offer a DeFi Yield API tied to tokenized Treasuries yielding 5%. In that structure, SoFi could offer customers 4% APY, keep 1% spread for itself, and avoid holding the assets directly on balance sheet. IOSG says that middleware layer — sitting between protocols and regulated fintech, and handling compliance wrappers plus tax reporting — remains largely open.
Conclusion
IOSG ends the report by arguing that fintech’s next chapter will come from the merger of traditional financial platforms with programmable financial infrastructure. Blockchain is not replacing existing systems, it says. It is increasingly being integrated as a background layer for settlement and liquidity.
Stablecoins, tokenized assets and onchain markets matter in that context because they offer faster settlement, cheaper cross-border payments and new financial product design, while staying mostly invisible to end users.
The firms best positioned to capture value in digital finance, according to IOSG, will be the ones that combine large-scale distribution, regulatory trust and control over infrastructure. Whether they operate as payment networks, developer platforms or consumer financial ecosystems, the winners will be the ones that abstract complexity and orchestrate value across multiple rails as programmable money becomes more widely adopted.