America’s Workers Got Left Behind in the FinTech Boom

Ingo Payments was born as a brick-and-mortar financial institution with 12 branches in the Atlanta metro, serving working-class Latino immigrants who lived on transactional payroll every day. These consumers would line up in our lobbies with a check to cash and a bill or two they needed to pay right away. They were not poor. They were skilled at managing cash flow from job to job and gig to gig. They just needed the timing to work. That memory shapes how I evaluate the past five years.

Looking back on the first half of this decade, I think about it in terms of what I saw coming and what caught me off guard. My “over” was the banking as a service (BaaS) shakeout. I watched platforms cobble together a dozen third-party vendors and call it innovation, and knew regulators would eventually call it something else. My “under” was simpler and more humbling: while the industry chased AI and stablecoins, the American worker’s basic need to access their paycheck got more urgent, not less.

Here’s what I mean:

The Over: The BaaS Shakeout

The Synapse collapse was not a black swan. It was the predictable result of an industry that prioritized growth metrics over compliance infrastructure. When your platform depends on eight to 12 vendors to process basic transactions, demonstrating effective risk management becomes nearly impossible. Nine sponsor banksreceived consent orders in 2024. Blue Ridge exited BaaS entirely after running 70 FinTech partnerships. The message was clear: a bank’s use of third parties does not diminish its responsibility to comply with all applicable laws. The companies that survive will own the majority of their value chain and have the resources to build compliance programs that really work.

The Under: The Worker Never Went Away

Here is what I underestimated. While FinTech funding collapsed 70% and the industry poured capital into AI and crypto, the American worker’s financial stress intensified. Two-thirds of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. And 42% live that way out of necessity, not choice — a number that jumped 18% in the past year alone.

The Wage to Wallet Index we developed with PYMNTS Intelligence quantifies what I saw in those Atlanta lobbies decades ago. The Labor Economy — roughly 60 million workers in shift-based and hourly roles — drives 15% of total consumer spending. These workers are highly sensitive to when money arrives, not just how much. The modern gig worker lives ride by ride, delivery by delivery, stitching together cash flows just like those customers two decades ago. Millions still leave work every day with a paper paycheck. The problem we started solving in 2001 is bigger than ever.

What 2026 Requires

The lesson from this decade’s first half is that the American worker was the story all along. Not AI financial advisors that only 17% of consumers trust. Not stablecoins that only 13% of institutions use. Not BNPL products where 41% of users paid late last year. It is expensive to be poor in America. The timing of pay is as critical to the worker as the amount. The winners in 2026 will be the companies that remember why we got into this business and build for the people who need us most.