AI Takes Center Stage at FinovateSpring 2026

Finovate events are always impactful and for last month’s FinovateSpring, the West Coast sensibility was on full display among the more than a thousand bank, credit union and fintech executives that gathered in San Diego to see first-hand the latest in tech innovation that is (and will be) impacting our industry.

Our friends at Informa always do a great job of hosting and as one might expect in 2026, there was a heavy emphasis on artificial intelligence as AI-oriented organizations dominated the stage at this year’s event. With more than 50 companies presenting, attendees were able to gain valuable insights into exactly how AI is permeating virtually every aspect of financial services.

Alongside AI, key themes this year focused on payments innovation for earned wage access and cross-border payments; enhanced customer/member experiences through the digital channel; and back office data management and analytics, as evidenced by this year’s “Best In Show” winners: Clockout, Cobalt, Crebit Pay, Finalytics.ai and Zengines.

Additional presentations that we found compelling included Vine Financial, an AI-powered commercial lending platform built for banks, credit unions, and agricultural lenders; SarisAI, whose agentic AI solution is custom-built to automate back-office workflows for financial institutions; PentEdge, a RegTech company delivering AIMS™ (AI Monitoring & Governance System) enabling community banks and credit unions to govern AI with confidence; and global identity trust platform, Elephant, that uses a massive identity graph of 5 billion profiles and 740 billion signals to help businesses distinguish between real users and fraudsters.

In recent years we’ve seen the technology innovation discussion dominated by mobile banking, then cryptocurrency and now “AI everywhere.” What will tomorrow bring? One thing is for certain, we will likely be seeing it on a future Finovate stage.