The next banking revolution: No apps required
For Bryan Carroll, CEO of InclusionFS and builder of TNEX Digital Bank in Vietnam, banking apps will soon become obsolete, replaced by AI twins. He shares with us his vision for the future of banking.
For Bryan Carroll, CEO of InclusionFS and builder of digital bank TNEX in Vietnam, banking apps will soon become obsolete, replaced by AI twins. He shares with us his vision for the future of banking.
I believe banking apps are living on borrowed time. Within five years, most will be irrelevant—not because people will stop needing banking, but because banking will cease to be something you ‘open’ altogether—instead, the interface will be an AI assistant.
For the past decade, consumers have been funneled into apps and super apps. Banks marketed it as convenience. In reality, it was containment. The vision of embedded finance was supposed to be seamless, contextual, and invisible.
Payments, credit, savings, and investing remain essential. But the way these services are delivered is about to change radically.
Goodbye apps, Hello AI twins
The next era of finance won't be defined by apps. It will be defined by AI twins: digital counterparts that understand our habits, goals, and context better than any app ever could.
Unlike today's reactive interfaces, your AI twin will anticipate your needs, offer personalized advice, and execute transactions automatically.
Example: You're planning a trip. Your AI twin notices your balance, suggests a budget-friendly credit option, books your tickets, and reschedules bill payments—all without opening a banking app once.
I believe that by 2030, 90% of consumer banking interactions could be machine-mediated—silent, invisible, and automated.
That's not mobile banking 2.0. That's banking dissolving into the background of life.
The friction points
Yes, regulation will slow this. Yes, security concerns are real. But remember: every banking innovation faced the same resistance.
• ATMs (1967): "Unsafe! Anyone could rob you!"
• Online banking (1995): "Hackable! Your money will disappear!"
• Mobile deposits (2009): "Fraud waiting to happen!"
• Open banking (2018):"Data breaches guaranteed!"
Each time, the naysayers were wrong. Not because the risks weren't real, but because the benefits outweighed them and safeguards evolved.
The difference this time? Tech giants are already in position. Apple has your biometrics. Google knows your location. Amazon tracks your spending. They don't need banking licenses—they need banking partners. And banks are lining up.
The real friction isn't technical or regulatory. It's psychological.
Do people want invisible banking? Ask anyone under 30 if they enjoy logging into their banking app. The answer is universal: they want their money to just work.
Who will win this future?
The winners won't be banks building bloated super apps. Those are destined for the same fate as portals and feature phones.
The real winners will be:
• Autonomy enablers: AI-first financial platforms that give people invisible, proactive money management.
• Ecosystem integrators: Platforms embedding finance into everyday life—retail, travel, health, SaaS, and work.
• Trust builders: Organizations that credibly guarantee security, governance, and ethical AI. Without trust, no one will hand over the keys to their financial lives.
• Data orchestrators & financial nudgers: New roles managing consent, context, and behavior, shaping smarter financial outcomes seamlessly.
Trust, not technology, will be the real currency of future banking.
Why now?
The shift isn't hypothetical. Barriers that once felt insurmountable—data integration, security, governance—are collapsing. Cloud, APIs, and big data unlocked digital banking. Now, AI is paving the way for something bigger: banking without banks.
Every technological wave that removed friction—ATMs, online banking, mobile apps, APIs—paved the way for this moment. AI won't just remove friction. It will remove the interface itself.
The endgame
The real race isn't about building the best banking app. It's about making banking disappear into the flow of life.
Banking is necessary. Banks? Not necessarily.
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