Crypto Integrated Into Fintech Stack
Shamir Karkal, co-founder and CEO of Sila, on the modern payments stack
The important shift is that crypto stopped being a separate product category and started becoming another money rail inside fintech stacks. In practice, a neobank, lender, or payments app could keep its normal KYC, ACH, and ledger systems, then add wallet funding, stablecoin settlement, yield products, or on chain liquidity on the back end. That is why the line between fintech and crypto was already blurring in Sila's customer base and across modular infrastructure partners.
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Sila was built around core money movement, not around a narrow banking wrapper. It handled KYC, KYB, ACH, ledgers, and crypto payments, and partnered for cards and other modules. That made it easier for a fintech to bolt on crypto functions without rebuilding the full stack or switching vendors.
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The comparable model was the modular stack forming around providers like Lithic, Sila, and Wyre. A fintech could mix card issuing, ACH, and crypto providers the same way a software team mixes Stripe, Twilio, and Plaid. The product lesson was that crypto features were being bought as another API capability, not as a full company pivot.
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The deeper demand driver was access to new balance sheet and liquidity tools. Beyond retail buy and sell, fintechs were exploring blockchain rails for financing, treasury movement, and yield, because smart contracts could open capital access faster than traditional bank or market integrations.
This convergence points toward a payments stack where users will not care whether money moves through ACH, cards, wires, or stablecoins. The winning infrastructure providers will be the ones that let fintechs route across all of them through one developer workflow, with compliance and ledgering handled underneath.