Qué están haciendo distinto las instituciones financieras que crecen en 2026
In six months of operation, Bre-B, the immediate payment system of the Banco de la República de Colombia, processed more than 617 million transactions worth over 97 trillion pesos, with 34 million users and 103 million active keys. It was not a pilot: it was critical infrastructure adopted in less than half a year.
In Brazil, the phenomenon is already mature. According to the Central Bank, Pix closed 2025 with nearly 80 billion transactions and R$35.3 trillion mobilized, representing growth of close to 34% year-on-year. By the first quarter of 2026, it accumulated 200 million monthly active users, 25 million of which are companies.
And data is no longer the sole property of the bank. Open Finance Brasil celebrated its fifth anniversary in February 2026 with more than 100 million connected accounts and 154 million active consents; unique consents grew by 143% between 2024 and 2025. On this basis, R$31 billion in credit has already been originated.
Nu Holdings ended the first quarter of 2026 with over 135 million customers, revenues exceeding US$5 billion, net income of US$871 million, and a 29% ROE. Its AI Private Banker serves more than 15 million monthly active users, and in Mexico, it reached break-even as the third-largest institution in the market, with 15 million customers.
Four practices that separate those who grow
Treating instant payments as a product, not as compliance. Connecting to the rail is the regulatory minimum; growth appears when it enables use cases: collections, payroll dispersion, recurring debits, billing. The cost of not doing so is concrete: according to Capgemini, 77% of banking executives anticipate disruption in debit card payments as account-to-account schemes proliferate.
Turning shared data into decision-making. Open finance is not an API requirement: it is the input that allows credit approval for those who had no history. Those who do not integrate it into their origination engine hand that customer over to those who do.
Industrializing AI, not piloting it. Deloitte is direct in its 2026 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook: agentic AI offers breakthrough potential, but only when sustained by accurate, timely, comprehensive, and governed data. And it recommends incorporating permissions, auditability, and human checkpoints into the agents themselves.
Making security part of the experience. HSBC implemented Dynamic Risk Assessment, developed with Google, on 900 million monthly transactions: 60% fewer false positives and investigations that went from weeks to days. Less friction for the legitimate customer and more precision regarding the fraudulent one.
The uncomfortable question
It is worth looking inward. How many different providers currently support your onboarding, your mobile app, your web banking, your service bot, your fraud engine, and your collections? How many times does your member repeat the same data in channels belonging to the same institution? How long does it take your team to launch a new product when each integration depends on a different contract and roadmap?
Those answers explain more of the growth ceiling than any marketing budget.
The data validates why. Capgemini reports that more than 60% of retail banking customers already perform all their transactions exclusively through digital channels. And a Salesforce survey cited in the same report found that 38% of customers switched financial institutions in 2024 due to dissatisfaction with the quality of service received. They did not leave because of the rate: they left because of the experience. Capgemini's World Retail Banking Report 2025, based on 8,000 respondents, provides the underlying data: only 26% are satisfied with their current experience with products such as cards.
The consulting firm's conclusion leaves no margin: institutions must migrate from fragmented, product-centric structures toward integrated, customer-centric systems. Because an experience is not built by adding tools: it is built on an ecosystem where onboarding, channels, conversation, credit, and fraud prevention share the same data, the same identity, and the same business logic.
Where Bankingly fits in
Bankingly was born exactly for that: to provide banks, cooperatives, and microfinance institutions with an integrated platform, Digital Banking for individuals and businesses, Family Banking, Digital Onboarding with KYC and biometrics, AI-powered Conversational Banking, and Fraud Prevention, operating as a single ecosystem rather than six providers negotiating among themselves. Today we support financial institutions in more than 15 countries in Latin America and Africa.
Your competition is not launching more tools. They are unifying the experience.
Schedule a free 30-minute diagnostic and leave that meeting knowing where you are losing customers along your digital journey.
