A small business in Denver pays its supplier directly through a stablecoin app and skips the correspondent bank that used to handle the leg of the transaction. A US consumer signs up for a roboadvisor that buys ETFs without a traditional broker on the front end. Both moves are disintermediation, the removal of a middle layer from a financial transaction. Within the next year both moves usually pick up a new middle layer, often a fintech aggregator or compliance vendor that replaces the role the displaced intermediary played. That is reintermediation. According to McKinsey research, US fintech revenue tied to these patterns now exceeds $310 billion annually. This explainer covers disintermediation versus reintermediation in the US, what each pattern means, and how the dynamics affect consumers and businesses.
The two patterns are not opposites. They are stages in a cycle. A financial transaction usually loses an intermediary that no longer earns its keep and gains a new one that delivers a different mix of value. The question for any operator is whether the cycle is producing better outcomes for the customer or just rearranging the players.
What disintermediation actually means
Disintermediation in US digital finance is the removal of a financial intermediary from a transaction. The intermediary is usually one whose role has been replaced by software, by a regulatory change, or by a new rail. Examples include payday lenders displaced by earned wage access platforms, traditional brokers displaced by zero-commission apps, and correspondent banks displaced by stablecoin settlement on cross-border flows.
The economic case for disintermediation is usually clear. The displaced intermediary’s fee disappears or shrinks, and the operator that runs the new flow captures part of the savings while passing the rest to the consumer or business. The case is strongest when the displaced intermediary’s role had degraded into transaction overhead with limited value-add.
The disintermediation case is weakest when the displaced intermediary was carrying compliance, risk, or trust functions that the new flow has not yet replaced. Cross-border transactions that skipped correspondent banks during the early stablecoin rollout illustrate the risk. The transactions were cheaper but harder to investigate when something went wrong. The lesson is that disintermediation needs to account for the full role of the displaced intermediary, not only the visible fee.
What reintermediation means
Reintermediation is the appearance of a new intermediary in a transaction that had previously lost one. The new intermediary usually combines a software-defined function with at least some of the trust or compliance role that the displaced intermediary played. The result is often a transaction that is cheaper than the original but more sophisticated than the disintermediated version.
Examples are easy to find inside US fintech. The earned wage access platforms that displaced payday lenders have themselves drawn the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s attention and have added compliance partners and underwriting models that effectively reintermediate the transaction. The roboadvisors that displaced traditional brokers added their own compliance and disclosure layers that look much like the broker’s old role recast in software. The stablecoin settlement platforms that displaced correspondent banks have added compliance vendors, on-chain analytics services, and identity providers that reintermediate the flow at lower cost.
The economic case for reintermediation is that the new intermediary delivers more value per dollar of fee than the old one did. The case fails when the new intermediary is mostly a renamed version of the old one with the same costs and risks. Operators are getting better at distinguishing real reintermediation from cosmetic relabeling, and US regulators are getting better at evaluating the difference.
The US data behind the cycle
The cycle is visible in several US fintech segments. Bain projects US embedded finance flows at about $7 trillion in 2026, with platform and infrastructure revenue rising from $21 billion in 2021 to $51 billion this year. A meaningful share of that growth reflects new intermediaries replacing old ones. The Banking-as-a-Service segment, projected by Fortune Business Insights at about $8.15 billion in the US in 2026, is itself a reintermediation of the bank-to-fintech relationship that used to require direct integration.
The peer-to-peer payment segment has been through a full cycle. Zelle disintermediated a portion of the check and ACH flow between consumers and reintermediated it with a closed-loop bank network. Venmo and Cash App disintermediated cash transfers between individuals and reintermediated them with software platforms that earn from instant transfer fees, debit interchange, and adjacent products. The original disintermediation reduced consumer cost. The reintermediation rebuilt the operator’s revenue base on a different fee structure.
The Federal Reserve’s payment systems framework shapes how the cycle plays out. FedNow’s expansion to 90 percent of US demand-deposit accounts and RTP’s 28 percent year over year growth into 2026 have given operators new rails to disintermediate around. The result has been a wave of new fintech platforms that bypass legacy intermediaries on speed and then reintermediate on data and trust.
What consumers and businesses gain
Consumers usually benefit from the cycle. Each round of disintermediation tends to reduce fees on the consumer side, and each round of reintermediation tends to add features that justify the new intermediary’s fee. Net out, consumers pay less and get more. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s open banking rule under Section 1033 has reinforced the dynamic by making it easier for consumers to move between intermediaries.
Businesses see a more complex picture. Disintermediation can reduce the cost of a specific transaction, but it can also push the business into a closer relationship with the new intermediary. A US small business that switches from a traditional acquirer to a software platform usually pays less per transaction but commits more deeply to a single vendor for software, payments, payroll, and lending. The trade-off is rational but the implications take time to manifest. TechBullion’s payments coverage documents how that calculation has shifted across vertical segments.
The Genius Act, signed in July 2025, added a new layer to the cycle by giving US-licensed operators a path to use payment stablecoins. Cross-border merchant payouts and high-velocity treasury operations have been the early disintermediation targets, with traditional correspondent banking displaced by stablecoin rails. Reintermediation has followed in the form of stablecoin orchestrators, compliance vendors, and custody services that replace much of what the displaced banks used to do.
What to watch in the next twelve months
Three trends will shape disintermediation and reintermediation in US digital finance over the year ahead. The first is the continued expansion of stablecoin disintermediation on cross-border flows. Visa’s stablecoin program reached a $4.5 billion annualized run rate by January 2026, and the legal cover provided by the Genius Act has lowered the barrier for US-licensed operators to adopt stablecoin rails. The reintermediation tier that has grown around stablecoin issuance, custody, and analytics is increasingly important to the long-term economics.
The second is the disintermediation of sponsor banks by direct charters. A few US fintechs have applied for or received their own charters, which lets them bypass the BaaS layer entirely. The disintermediation is real but the reintermediation is just as real, because direct chartered fintechs still need compliance, fraud, and identity partners that look much like the sponsor bank ecosystem they replaced. The disintermediation savings tend to be smaller in practice than they look in theory.
The third is the role of AI in the cycle. Generative AI tools have started disintermediating certain analytical and compliance tasks that previously required specialized vendors. The reintermediation tier is appearing in the form of AI-tooling vendors that handle audit, oversight, and regulatory translation. The cycle will continue. The role of the operator is to decide which patterns to lean into and which to wait out, because both rounds of disintermediation and reintermediation carry meaningful execution risk that the surface-level economics do not always reveal.
