In September 2024, Visa published a research paper describing “smart contract wallets” that could automatically manage a user’s finances: paying bills, rebalancing portfolios, and optimising yields across DeFi protocols without human intervention. The paper was not a product announcement. It was a signal of where the largest payment network in the world sees fintech heading. Blockchain-based financial services are moving beyond their current applications (payments, lending, tokenisation) into territory where automation, artificial intelligence, and programmable money converge. The global blockchain market is projected to grow from $31.18 billion in 2025 to $577.36 billion by 2034, per Fortune Business Insights, at 36.50% CAGR. The innovations that will drive most of that growth do not exist at scale yet.
Account Abstraction and the Invisible Wallet
Account abstraction, formalised through Ethereum’s ERC-4337 standard in 2023, is the technical change most likely to make blockchain-based finance mainstream. The concept replaces the traditional blockchain wallet (which requires seed phrases, gas fee management, and manual transaction signing) with “smart wallets” that behave like regular app accounts.
A smart wallet can recover access through social contacts rather than a seed phrase. It can pay network fees in stablecoins rather than requiring the user to hold ETH. It can batch multiple transactions into a single approval. It can set spending limits, schedule recurring payments, and delegate permissions to third-party applications.
Data from Chainalysis’s 2024 Global Crypto Adoption Index shows that emerging markets in South and Southeast Asia continue to lead grassroots cryptocurrency adoption, driven by remittance use cases and limited access to traditional banking services.
According to CoinGecko’s 2024 annual crypto report, total cryptocurrency market capitalisation exceeded $3.5 trillion by the end of 2024, reflecting renewed institutional interest following spot ETF approvals in the United States.
For fintech companies, account abstraction removes the usability barrier that has limited blockchain to technically sophisticated users. A neobank can offer blockchain-based savings products where interest accrues from DeFi lending protocols, without the customer ever creating a traditional blockchain wallet, managing gas fees, or interacting with a blockchain explorer. The experience looks identical to a traditional savings account. The infrastructure underneath is entirely different.
Privy, Dynamic, and Particle Network already provide smart wallet infrastructure that fintech companies embed in their products. Over 10 million smart wallets were created in 2024, and the number is expected to grow rapidly as more fintech companies integrate blockchain capabilities behind familiar interfaces.
Intent-Based Financial Systems
Current blockchain transactions require users to specify exactly what they want to do: swap this token for that token, on this exchange, at this price, paying this much in gas. Intent-based systems invert this model. The user states what they want to achieve (“convert $500 to euros at the best available rate”), and the system finds the optimal execution path.
UniswapX, launched in 2023, pioneered this model for token trading. Users submit “intents” (desired trade outcomes), and a network of solvers (specialised market makers) compete to fulfil those intents at the best price. The solver handles routing, gas optimisation, and cross-chain execution. The user simply states what they want.
For fintech applications, intent-based architecture means that blockchain financial products can offer the same simplicity as traditional fintech products. A user who wants to send money internationally does not need to know which blockchain to use, which stablecoin to convert to, or which liquidity source offers the best rate. They state their intent, and the system executes optimally.
This model extends beyond trading. A user could state an intent like “allocate my idle cash to earn the highest risk-adjusted yield” or “pay my supplier in their preferred currency at the lowest total cost.” Intent-based systems with AI-powered solvers could evaluate options across multiple blockchains, DeFi protocols, and payment rails to find the best execution, something that currently requires manual research and multiple transactions.
AI and Blockchain Convergence
Artificial intelligence and blockchain are converging in two directions. AI is being used to operate blockchain-based financial systems more efficiently. Blockchain is being used to make AI systems more transparent and accountable.
AI-powered DeFi management is the first direction. Protocols like Yearn Finance have long used automated strategies to optimise yield across lending protocols. The next generation uses machine learning models that analyse market conditions, predict interest rate changes, and rebalance portfolios in real time. Gauntlet, a risk management firm, uses AI models to set risk parameters for Aave and Compound, adjusting collateral requirements based on market volatility.
Blockchain-verified AI is the second direction. As AI becomes more capable, questions about whether AI systems are operating as intended become more important. Blockchain can provide verifiable records of AI model training data, inference outputs, and decision-making processes. A fintech company using an AI model for credit scoring could publish the model’s decisions on a blockchain, allowing regulators and applicants to verify that the model operates within approved parameters.
83% of financial institutions are exploring blockchain, per Coinlaw. A growing subset are also deploying AI. The intersection, where AI operates financial systems and blockchain verifies AI behaviour, is likely to be one of the most significant areas of fintech innovation over the next decade.
Programmable Compliance and Embedded Regulation
Today’s financial compliance operates retroactively. Institutions process transactions first and check compliance afterward, flagging suspicious activity for review by compliance teams. Blockchain enables a different model: compliance rules encoded into the infrastructure itself.
A tokenised security can have transfer restrictions programmed into its smart contract. The token physically cannot be transferred to a wallet that has not completed KYC verification. A payment can be blocked by the smart contract if it exceeds a jurisdiction’s reporting threshold without proper documentation. An investment product can automatically enforce holding period requirements.
The EU’s MiCA regulation, effective December 2024, anticipates this model by requiring digital asset service providers to maintain on-chain compliance records. Regulators can access the blockchain directly rather than waiting for institutions to compile and submit reports.
For fintech companies, programmable compliance reduces the cost of operating across multiple jurisdictions. Instead of maintaining separate compliance workflows for each country, a smart contract can encode multiple jurisdictions’ rules and automatically apply the correct set based on the transaction’s origin and destination. This is not fully realised yet, but pilot programmes in Singapore (Project Guardian) and the EU (under MiCA) are testing the concept in production environments.
Real-World Asset Tokenisation at Scale
Tokenised real-world assets exceeded $5 billion in 2024 (excluding stablecoins). Industry projections from Boston Consulting Group and others estimate the tokenised asset market could reach $10 to $16 trillion by 2030. Even the conservative end of that range would represent a structural shift in how financial assets are issued, traded, and held.
The next phase of tokenisation moves beyond money market funds and government bonds into more complex asset classes. Private equity tokenisation would give investors liquidity in a traditionally illiquid asset class. Real estate tokenisation would allow fractional ownership of commercial properties. Infrastructure tokenisation would let pension funds invest in specific bridges, roads, or energy projects rather than broad infrastructure funds.
BlackRock’s BUIDL fund ($500 million in tokenised Treasuries on Ethereum) proved the concept. Franklin Templeton and WisdomTree validated it further. The question for fintech innovation is not whether tokenisation works but how quickly the infrastructure (custody, compliance, secondary markets, data feeds) matures to support it across asset classes.
The Blockchain-as-a-Service segment, at 51.72% of market revenue, will grow as tokenisation expands because each new asset class requires infrastructure for issuance, custody, trading, and compliance.
North America holds 43.80% of the global blockchain market. The region’s concentration of capital markets infrastructure, venture capital, and fintech talent positions it to lead the next phase of blockchain-based financial innovation. The $577 billion market projected for 2034 will be built not on a single breakthrough but on the accumulation of innovations, account abstraction, intent-based systems, AI integration, programmable compliance, asset tokenisation, that collectively make blockchain infrastructure as routine in fintech as cloud computing is today.
