Two separate landmark moves from Santander and Upstart signal a new era of autonomous, AI-native finance infrastructure developed at all levels of fintech industry.
The lines between technology company and financial institution are blurring faster than regulators can redraw them. This week, two major developments — one from a Silicon Valley AI lender, the other from a European banking giant — underscore a shared conviction: the future of finance is autonomous, intelligent, and operating at machine speed.
Upstart Eyes a Banking License
Upstart, the AI-powered lending marketplace that uses machine learning to assess creditworthiness beyond traditional FICO scores, has applied for a national bank charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). If approved, the move would transform Upstart from a marketplace intermediary connecting borrowers with bank partners into a deposit-taking, loan-originating institution in its own right.
As a chartered bank, Upstart could hold loans on its own balance sheet, dramatically reducing its dependence on third-party bank partners and the capital markets volatility that has squeezed its business model in recent years. It would also gain direct access to low-cost deposit funding, a structural advantage that traditional banks have long enjoyed and that fintech challengers have struggled to replicate.
The application represents a significant regulatory gamble. Fintech companies have historically found the charter process grueling — LendingClub’s years-long pursuit of an industrial loan company charter is a cautionary tale the industry knows well. But Upstart’s AI-first identity may itself become a selling point with regulators increasingly attuned to innovation in credit access and financial inclusion.
Santander Tests Agentic Payments in Latin America
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic and deep into emerging markets, Santander is piloting a different kind of AI ambition. The Spanish banking giant has begun testing agentic payment systems across several Latin American markets, deploying AI agents capable of initiating, routing, and completing payment transactions with minimal human intervention.
The pilot, which spans markets including Brazil, Mexico, and Chile, targets both consumer and business payment flows. Agentic AI systems that can plan and execute multi-step tasks autonomously represent a significant leap beyond chatbots or recommendation engines. In payments, it means an AI that doesn’t just suggest a transfer but executes it, navigating local rails, currency conversions, and compliance checks in real time.
Latin America is a particularly fertile testing ground. The region combines high mobile penetration, fragmented legacy infrastructure, and a large unbanked population hungry for faster, cheaper financial services. Santander’s agentic approach could compress settlement times and reduce the friction that currently makes cross-border payments in the region costly. The pilot comes shortly after Santander conducted Europe’s first AI agent transaction facilitated by Mastercard.
A Shared Signal
Together, these moves tell a cohesive story: AI is becoming the structural backbone for payments and e-commerce sectors. Whether through Upstart’s bid to own the full lending stack or Santander’s autonomous payment agents operating at continental scale, the financial industry is racing toward a model where machines don’t just assist humans — they act on their behalf. The regulatory frameworks, however, are still catching up.
