Crypto and Fintech Converge on Workflows
Shamir Karkal, co-founder and CEO of Sila, on the modern payments stack
The important point is that crypto and fintech converge at the workflow level, not at the technology level. Both are trying to move money, verify who users are, keep a ledger of balances, manage fraud and compliance, and let apps add financial actions without becoming banks. Sila’s bet was that the same developer plumbing, especially ACH, ledgering, KYC, and KYB, could serve a crypto app moving stablecoins and a fintech app moving dollars with only the rails changing underneath.
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In practice, the overlap starts with the basic jobs. A wallet, neobank, marketplace payout flow, or crypto on ramp all need identity checks, account linking, balance tracking, and money movement. That is why Sila positioned itself around programmable money and complex funds flows instead of a single end market.
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The main difference is where the hard part sits. In crypto, a startup can plug into onchain contracts quickly, but reaching traditional bank accounts and card networks is harder. In fintech, access to those regulated rails exists, but compliance, sponsor bank coordination, and slow integrations create the bottleneck.
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This overlap also explains the stack split between point solutions and all in one platforms. Sila focused on ACH, ledgering, KYC, and crypto payments, then partnered for cards and bill pay. The broader market showed the same divide, with modular providers like Sila and Lithic on one side, and bundled BaaS platforms on the other.
Going forward, the line between crypto infrastructure and fintech infrastructure keeps fading as more apps mix bank rails, card rails, and blockchain rails in one product. The winners are likely to be providers that own one hard money movement layer deeply, then connect cleanly to the rest of the stack, because customers increasingly want one workflow across multiple rails, not separate systems for each.