Financial technologies will ratify American financial dominance of global commerce for the next 100 years. The US dollar became the world’s reserve currency in 1971, heralding America’s stature in global finance. However, entities seeking to circumvent American oversight through rival systems based on financial technologies pose a threat to this position.
Nevertheless, the digital revolution continues to disrupt the global landscape as America’s rival nations assert their influence in geopolitics using digital investments that threaten Western values rooted in democratic traditions of individual liberties and dignity. This challenge would be exacerbated if the technological standards set by the US’s geopolitical rivals in these emerging fields become widely adopted around the world.
The financial services industry is associated with conservatism, and financial innovation has been slow for many years. However, in the last decade, there has been an explosion of financial innovation enhanced by technology, which is creating new possibilities every day.
The question becomes, how can you scale financial solutions in a non-cost-prohibitive manner? Embedded finance, or the integration of financial services into non-traditional financial platforms, has been a defining fintech trend for years.
According to research, lack of trust has been one of the critical barriers to the adoption of these financial products. Documented challenges in these spaces include a low participation rate, continuous emigration of the working population, naira devaluation, and inflation.
In my role at Synergos, I bridged funding gaps for agro-entrepreneurs who found it difficult to access funding due to prohibitive interest rates and a lack of appropriate collateral or guarantors, which are typical of established lending practices. However, many potential businesses did not qualify because they did not keep trustworthy records. Something similar occurred at Jalo.ng, which was building logistics solutions for small businesses. We were a marketplace for logistics solutions; however, to boost growth, we decided to offer small loans to small businesses and faced the same gridlock—they did not keep useful financial records.
However, financial innovation is taking up different forms in different parts of the world, mostly due to path dependence, i.e., legacy infrastructure and policies are affecting its evolution. For instance, in East Africa, the M-Pesa model is popular, which has made a telecoms company the biggest provider of financial services in East Africa. In Nigeria, there is a symbiotic relationship, as banks rely on telecommunications infrastructure, which offers low-tech options for distributing financial services at scale.
By making strategic open finance regulations and deploying flexible risk infrastructure, Brazil has become a global benchmark for interoperability of technology platforms, unlocking significant economic value across industries and generating wealth in ways that create real economic impact.
While the United States slightly lags in the modernization of its financial system, significant strides were recently made under the current administration of the United States government. On July 18, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins) into law, enacting a regulatory framework requiring stablecoin issuers to maintain 100% reserves in U.S. dollars or short-term Treasury bills.
Embedded finance integrates financial products and services into the digital experience of a non-financial service or good. According to the World Bank, it can be defined as “the seamless incorporation of financial products or services into nonfinancial products or services. It is also known as “distributed banking,” as it engages customers in different contexts or journeys where they operate.
According to recent estimates, by 2030, the market for embedded finance will grow to US$7.2 trillion. The ability to integrate financial products at the moment and place of need. In many cases, this means integrating financial services into apps or marketplaces that are accessed every day by consumers and corporations and where financially linked decisions are made.
This approach provides “one-stop” solutions to customers. However, the acceleration and digitization of customer journeys due to digitalization, together with the growth of platforms and digital ecosystems, has led to an increase in the number and variety of use cases available. This means financial services can be offered at scale to segments of the population that have been denied access to financial services for various reasons, including bias, cost, and a lack of credit history.
This potentially helps mitigate the rising income inequalities, which form a subtext for social dissonance. Furthermore, by entrenching US digital asset leadership, the US dominance of the global financial order is inevitable, reinforcing US financial leadership and upholding US values in global digital asset markets, which are crucial to the US’s larger strategic interests.
Financial globalization refers to the increasing integration and interdependence of global financial markets and institutions, spurred on by financial deregulation and the improved capabilities of technology. This means that financial decisions in one part of the world can quickly transfer to other economies. Therefore, the stability of the global financial system will increasingly converge around digital technologies.
In a range of areas in the economy, it can be expensive to be poor, with low-income consumers paying more for everything from diapers to canned soup. Lack of access to safe and affordable financial services, which include payment settlement, credit intermediation, and maturity transformations provided to consumers by a range of financial institutions, is not only costly but is also significantly more common for lower-income households.
These households are those referred to as “unbanked,” meaning they lack a bank account, and “underbanked,” those that have a bank account but may supplement it with reliance on alternative financial services. Expanded financial markets bring potential opportunities and challenges.
Without a doubt, my policy transformations in fintech are laying the groundwork for the future use of digital assets, primarily in cross-border transactions and international trade. The US dollar’s status as the global reserve currency of trade, and thus its economic competitiveness, is under threat should rival jurisdictions define the standards by which digital financial technologies operate.
