Hey fintech fam, 💜  

This week, I want to talk about something that’s been sitting with me.

Not just as a journalist covering this space—but as someone thinking a lot about where fintech goes from here.

Because we’ve spent the last decade building faster systems. Smarter products. More access. We’ve really matured.

And now we’re hitting a moment where the real question isn’t what can we build?

It’s: what can people actually trust?

I had a conversation this week that really brought that into focus—and I think it’s one we all need to be paying attention to.

Let’s get into it 👇🏽

#TRENDING

There’s a story Frances Zelazny, co-producer of the Fintech Security Summit, told me that I haven’t stopped thinking about.

A grandmother gets a call from her grandson.

He’s supposed to visit her that weekend, but he’s calling early. He sounds panicked. He says he got into an accident on the way. He doesn’t have his insurance card. His car is being towed. If he can’t get the money, he could be in serious trouble.

And please — don’t call his parents.

So she does what any grandmother would do.

She goes to the bank. Takes out the cash. Waits for someone to come pick it up.

And someone does.

By the time the truth catches up, the money is gone.

The voice wasn’t her grandson. It was cloned. The story wasn’t random. It was engineered. Somehow, the scammers knew the family relationship, the timing of the visit, enough personal context to make the lie feel like love.

That is the fraud environment we are in now.

Not someone in a hoodie guessing passwords.

A coordinated, data-driven, AI-enabled ecosystem designed to exploit the very thing financial services depends on most: trust.

And that’s why the Fintech Security Summit matters.

Because fraud is no longer a side conversation. It’s not a back-office nuisance. It’s not something compliance teams can quietly absorb while growth teams keep sprinting.

Fraud has become a test of whether digital finance can keep scaling at all.

According to the FBI, fraud losses reached $20 billion in 2025, up from $16 billion the year before. That kind of jump should make everyone in fintech sit up straighter.

But the number isn’t even the scariest part.

The scariest part is how sophisticated the attacks have become — and how fragmented the response still is.

As Frances put it during our conversation, this is not a fintech-specific problem. It’s an ecosystem problem.

Banks are involved. Fintechs are involved. Telcos are involved. Crypto platforms, law enforcement, regulators, payment networks, identity providers — everyone touches some piece of the risk surface.

And that is exactly why no one can solve it alone.

For years, fintech optimized for speed. Faster onboarding. Faster payments. Faster approvals. Faster access. And to be clear, that speed created real value.

It expanded access, reduced friction, and made financial services feel less like standing in line at the DMV.

But speed without shared accountability creates openings.

When money moves instantly, there is no buffer. When identity can be replicated, verification gets harder. When scams are personalized, education alone is not enough.

At some point, “be careful” stops being a strategy.

The hard question now is not whether we have enough technology. There are more fraud, identity, and security solutions than ever.

The harder question is: why aren’t institutions buying, integrating, and coordinating fast enough?

That’s where the conversation gets uncomfortable — and useful.

Because this isn’t just a tooling problem. It’s a measurement problem. A language problem. A boardroom problem.

One company calls something fraud. Another calls it a scam. Another classifies it as an operational loss. Another routes it through customer support.

And before anyone can align on a solution, the customer has already lost money, time, and trust.

You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

And you definitely can’t fix what everyone defines differently.

That is the kind of conversation we’re building the Security Summit around.

Not a day of vendor pitches.
Not “AI will fix it” panels.

A room designed for the people who actually sit inside the mess: banks, fintechs, identity companies, law enforcement, crypto leaders, telcos, policy experts, and operators who know exactly where the system breaks.

We’ll talk about whether we should be verifying receivers, not just senders. We’ll talk about what boards need to understand about fraud as a business risk.

We’ll talk about deepfakes, scams, measurement gaps, and the uncomfortable reality that security has been treated like a cost center for too long.

Because here’s the reframe I keep coming back to:

Security is not the opposite of growth.
Security is what makes growth durable.

If fintech companies do not protect customers, they will not keep customers.

And if trust erodes far enough, the whole promise of digital finance starts moving backward — toward slower systems, manual checks, branch visits, and human intermediaries people thought they were done with.

That would be the tragedy.

Not just the money lost, though that matters deeply.

The tragedy would be losing the progress fintech has made because the ecosystem refused to coordinate around the risks it created.

So yes, this is a serious topic.

It’s also why I’m genuinely excited for this room.

Because the best events don’t just put people on stage. They create the conditions for someone to say, “I have that problem,” and someone else to say, “I think I can help.”

That is where the work starts.

If you work in fraud, identity, payments, risk, compliance, AI, banking, crypto, policy — or honestly, if you care about whether digital finance can keep earning trust — this is the room to be in.

The future of fintech won’t only be decided by who builds the fastest.

It will be decided by who can build systems that people still believe in.

→ Join us at the Fintech Security Summit
→ Come ready to talk about what’s actually breaking — and what we’re going to do about it

Let’s keep you booked and busy. Every Thursday, I share fintech events worth adding to your calendar— both IRL and online.

The window to join us for the premium NYFTW experience is closing—last chance to lock in your spot.

SEE YOU SOON, NEW YORK!

📰 Share this newsletter with a friend and start growing your network.

🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn for daily insights on female leadership.

🤝 Grow your business through content & community by partnering with me.

📣 Promote yourself to 50,000 subscribers by sponsoring this newsletter.

🎤 Host an epic event by booking me as a speaker, moderator, or emcee.

📚 Increase your expertise by ordering your copy of my book, Fintech Feminists: Increasing Inclusion, Redefining Innovation, and Changing the Future for Women Around the World.

That wraps up today’s edition—thanks for reading! Until next week, keep innovating and challenging the status quo.

See you Tuesday!

Love,

Nicole 💜