For years, large retailers invested heavily in their own fintech divisions, convinced they could develop payment solutions internally, overlook smaller players and innovate independently — and, for a while, they succeeded.
Today, however, despite boasting vast resources and a global reach, corporations are realizing that money no longer guarantees innovation.
Why? Because scale is a double-edged sword. Corporations are tied up in bureaucracy, regulatory scrutiny and antitrust pressure that slow them down. Meanwhile, once dismissed fintech “disruptors” face fewer limitations and move faster.
They’re the ones testing white-label products, localized lending and blockchain-based rails that already settle billions of dollars in stablecoins each day.
Scale Isn’t an Advantage
On the surface, corporations have a global reach, brand recognition and substantial budgets that enable them to dominate markets, so size should give them a competitive edge. Yet, when it comes to innovation, the same scale becomes a liability.
Every new idea within a corporation must pass through numerous legal checks, regulatory reviews and risk assessments. Ultimately, what fintech can test in a few weeks takes a retailer a whole year to obtain approval. Shareholders are anything but a minor factor.
They expect companies to protect and grow their multibillion-dollar investments. This load makes large retailers prioritize projects with predictable quarterly earnings over experiments.
As a result, resources that could fund new products are often allocated to safer, incremental upgrades. Even if innovation budgets are approved, they’re frequently stuck in “pilot mode,” never becoming part of the company’s core business.
The external pressure from regulators only intensifies the problem. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission decided to block a $24.6 billion retail merger, arguing that it would reduce competition and lead to higher prices. It’s a reminder that, for retail giants, every major deal risks turning into disputes with regulators that stall innovation.
For retailers, scale is no longer an advantage but a trap, and one that makes genuine innovation nearly impossible. By contrast, fintechs have the freedom to experiment, and in today’s market, speed matters more than size, eventually deciding who wins.
The Pro-Tech Mindset
Small and mid-sized providers aren’t bound by the same level of regulatory scrutiny or shareholder demands, so they’re much more agile. They have a simpler structure and a culture that treats technology not as a support function but as the business itself.
That’s why they can launch, test, and adjust products quickly, making retailers view them as the true engines of progress. This “pro-tech” mindset matters because instead of borrowing outdated infrastructure or endlessly adapting legacy systems, fintechs build directly on modern rails.
The evolution of crypto payments and what lies ahead
In practice, this means building on cloud-native architecture, modular APIs and microservices — tools that enable them to integrate new technologies like blockchain without waiting for approval.
This gives fintechs a significantly stronger position to define the future of digital finance — a role that retailers have yet to claim. Still, retailers are beginning to accept that partnering only with fintechs can break their innovation deadlock, as recent decisions by Walmart and Shein have proven.
In 2025, Walmart changed its buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider because the company understood that a modern, agile fintech could deliver faster and adapt to consumer needs more effectively. Likewise, in 2024, Shein launched a co-branded credit card with a Mexican fintech, which makes it clear that relying on local expertise was safer than trying to build a financial product internally.
Taken together, these moves show that corporations that once tried to squeeze fintechs out are now asking them to power their core products. Where does this lead?
The Path Ahead: Partnership or Irrelevance
BNPL and co-branded cards are only the first step. The real frontier lies in crypto-native infrastructure, encompassing tokenized payments, blockchain settlement rails and digital loyalty systems. The challenges, however, ranging from multi-jurisdictional compliance to the high cost of building onchain solutions in-house, only multiply.
This is precisely where the gap widens: Retailers face serious restrictions, while fintechs are already building the rails.
For example, Circle integrated USDC into payment providers’ networks, turning a stablecoin into a mainstream payment option. At the same time, in emerging markets, startups are releasing APIs for stablecoin-linked cards, providing businesses with instant access to crypto payments without requiring them to build anything from scratch. This is the point where retailers risk falling behind again.
Yes, they may go alone, but that only means repeating the same cycle of bureaucracy and delay that already slowed them down. That’s why partnering with fintechs is the only way forward. Fintechs bring the rails, retailers bring the reach, and together, they can deliver products that scale to millions.
Corporations must learn that in today’s market, scale without innovation is a dead end. Blockchain rails are already upon us, and the retailers that seize this reality will shape the future while the rest fade into the background.