Meta’s
quiet rollout last week of USDC creator payouts in Colombia and the
Philippines, four years after the company sold its failed Diem stablecoin (formerly Libra) assets to Silvergate Bank for $182 million, has revived the old question of
whether Big Tech is finally coming for retail finance.
The answer
in 2026 is yes, but not from Apple, Google or Mark Zuckerberg.
Singapore Summit: Meet the largest
APAC brokers you know (and those you still don’t!)
The
clearest competitive threats to Robinhood, Trading 212, eToro and Revolut are
being assembled inside Walmart’s OnePay app, valued above $4 billion, and Elon
Musk’s X Money, now licensed to handle payments
across 41 US states.
Both lean
on the same architecture, brokerage-as-a-service, or BaaS, plugging Zerohash
and DriveWealth into apps that already reach hundreds of millions of users.
OnePay
added Bitcoin and Ethereum trading via Zerohash in October 2025, then partnered
with DriveWealth at the end of that month to bring stocks and ETFs into the
same banking app.
X has
rolled out cashtags for stock and crypto charts and signaled plans to plug trading
directly into the timeline.
Meta’s $3 Billion Creator
Pipeline Lands in USDC, Not Libra
Meta
confirmed on April 29 that it had begun routing creator payouts in Circle’s
USDC stablecoin via Stripe’s Link wallet, with settlement on Solana and
Polygon. The pilot is currently limited to two markets selected for high
creator-economy density and weak cross-border banking infrastructure.
The company
paid out roughly $3 billion to creators globally in 2025, according to Fortune,
with growth of about 35% year-over-year. Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron said the
program is expected to expand to more than 160 countries by year-end 2026.
The setup
explicitly avoids the central feature that doomed Libra: Meta is not issuing
its own coin. Spokesperson Andy Stone has publicly pushed back on parallels to
the original 2019 project.
Meta has begun testing payouts to content creators using the USDC stablecoin on the Polygon blockchain, aiming to speed up payments and simplify cross-border transfers.
The program, currently piloted in Colombia and the Philippines, is expected to expand to over 160 countries,… pic.twitter.com/rHbAGOHjR3
— What’s Trending (@WhatsTrending) May 4, 2026
FinanceMagnates.com
coverage of Meta’s stablecoin re-entry strategy flagged that the company was racing
to launch before the GENIUS Act’s restrictions on Big Tech stablecoin issuance
fully take effect.
OnePay Hits $4 Billion
Valuation With a Stack That Looks Like Revolut
OnePay
began life in January 2021 as a joint venture between Walmart and Ribbit
Capital, the same VC firm behind Robinhood, Affirm and Credit Karma. After
acquiring fintechs Even and ONE, it rebranded to OnePay in March 2025.
Through
2024 and 2025, the company built out a stack that now matches or exceeds
Revolut on most consumer verticals. A 2024 funding round valued OnePay at $2.5
billion. A 2025 employee tender pushed the figure above $4 billion, according
to Bloomberg.
Scoring:
1.0 = live consumer product; 0.5 = exploring or in development; 0 = no product.
Verticals: Payments (P2P/wallet), BNPL, Crypto trading, Brokerage (stocks/ETFs), Banking/deposits, Insurance, Card products, SMB lending.
The stack is striking. OnePay runs high-yield savings via Coastal Community Bank, BNPL through Klarna, and earned wage access for 1.6 million Walmart associates. A Synchrony-Mastercard credit card replaced Capital One inside Walmart stores last fall.
Bitcoin and Ethereum trading via Zerohash went live in October 2025, followed weeks later by equity and ETF trading powered by DriveWealth, the same firm behind Revolut’s US offering.
The app was running $15 billion in annual payment flow and over $200 million in run-rate revenue by year-end 2024.
X Money Launches in 41
States With Brokerage in the Pipeline
Musk’s X
Corp has gone further than any other Magnificent-Seven-adjacent company toward
owning the financial primitives. X Money’s public beta began rolling
out in April after
months of delays.
The product
launched with FDIC-insured deposits via Cross River Bank, P2P transfers powered by Visa Direct, a Visa-issued metal debit card
with cashback, and a 6% APY on deposits, though PYMNTS noted it was unclear
whether the rate is permanent or promotional.
Today we’re rolling out the new Cashtags feature for web on X․com. Now X can be a core part of your trading terminal with real-time charts and posts for every asset. pic.twitter.com/QD8Tn4uj1l
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) April 30, 2026
The
brokerage angle is in development. X rolled out cashtags in the United States
and Canada on April 14, allowing users to tap “AAPL” or “BTC” inside the timeline and see real-time
price charts.
Linda Yaccarino, the Former CEO of X, Source: LinkedIn
Then-CEO
Linda Yaccarino said at Cannes Lions in June 2025 that users would soon be able
to “make investments and trades directly through the platform.” Smart Cashtags, which would route to
in-app crypto buying, are reportedly in development.
Musk
himself has framed X Money as “the place where all the money is.” The
architectural similarity to OnePay is unmistakable: X is plugging into licensed
banking and brokerage infrastructure rather than building its own.
Its
distribution moat is roughly 600 million monthly active users.
Apple, Google and Amazon
Quietly Pick Partnerships Over Licenses
The
contrast with the larger Magnificent Seven names is stark. Apple, the Big Tech
firm with the deepest financial-services footprint, has spent the past 24
months retreating to a partnership model.
In June
2024, Apple wound down Apple Pay Later, replacing it with global
integration of installment offers from Affirm and Citigroup inside iOS Wallet.
The CFPB fined Apple and Goldman Sachs a combined $89 million in October 2024
over Apple Card dispute-handling failures.
In January 2026, Apple confirmed JPMorgan
Chase as the new Apple Card issuer, with more than $20 billion in card balances
expected to transfer over a 24-month period, closing the chapter on a partnership
Goldman bankers had publicly disowned.
Google has
concentrated its push in India, where Flex by Google Pay, a UPI-linked
co-branded credit card with Axis Bank, launched in December 2025. Amazon’s
strategy is purely embedded:
Affirm provides BNPL at checkout, and Amazon Lending issues SMB
loans through Goldman Sachs, Lendistry, Parafin and fintech Slope. None of the
three has applied for a broker-dealer license in the past 36 months.
Why Big Tech Still Refuses
to Build Retail Brokerage
Apple,
Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have collectively launched zero retail
trading products since the failed Libra project in 2019. Regulatory friction is
the most cited reason.
Broker-dealer
licensing under FINRA and the SEC, Reg BI, payment-for-order-flow scrutiny, and
recent best-execution reforms create higher compliance costs than
money-transmitter licensing.
Arkadiusz Jóźwiak
“European
brokers don’t need to fear Apple,” Arkadiusz Jóźwiak, the financial analyst
and Editor-in-Chief at Comparic.pl, told FinanceMagnates.com. “They need to
watch the back door, the one Walmart and Musk are walking through with
off-the-shelf brokerage stacks.”
Reputational
risk is the second. Bankers who have pitched retail trading products to Big
Tech executives have described meetings ending on the same point: the
consumer-protection consequences of an Instagram or WhatsApp user losing money
on stocks are not a fight Apple or Meta wants to pick.
The third
is that brokerage-as-a-service makes ownership unnecessary. DriveWealth,
Alpaca, Bitpanda Technology Solutions and Zerohash now allow distribution
platforms to offer trading without holding the license.
Yahoo Finance’s one-click Coinbase
trading integration,
announced in February 2026, follows the same architecture.
Brokers Still See Revolut
as the Bigger Threat
For
European retail brokers, Big Tech remains a distant concern. Revolut, with
roughly 60 million users, €8.5 billion in customer assets, and a reported $150
billion IPO target, is the closer competitor.
Omar Arnaout, the CEO of XTB
XTB CEO
Omar Arnaout, speaking at Invest Cuffs in Warsaw, said he believed “Robinhood
probably won’t achieve success in Europe,” instead pointing to Revolut as
the standout competitor.
The
asymmetry, however, is plain in the user-base math. Walmart and X together
touch more than 850 million people on a weekly or monthly basis.
Robinhood
reported roughly 26 million funded accounts at the end of 2025, while
Interactive Brokers ended Q1 2026 with 4.4 million daily average trades.
If even a
small share of OnePay or X users open in-app trading accounts, the
customer-acquisition cost compression alone would meaningfully erode the funnel
that mid-tier brokers depend on.
For brokers
watching the Big Tech threat from across the Atlantic, the message of 2026 so
far is that the danger is no longer about Apple or Google launching a
stock-trading app.
It is about
Walmart, Musk and Shopify quietly assembling what those companies will not,
then turning their existing user bases into a customer-acquisition channel that
traditional brokers cannot match.
Meta’s
quiet rollout last week of USDC creator payouts in Colombia and the
Philippines, four years after the company sold its failed Diem stablecoin (formerly Libra) assets to Silvergate Bank for $182 million, has revived the old question of
whether Big Tech is finally coming for retail finance.
The answer
in 2026 is yes, but not from Apple, Google or Mark Zuckerberg.
Singapore Summit: Meet the largest
APAC brokers you know (and those you still don’t!)
The
clearest competitive threats to Robinhood, Trading 212, eToro and Revolut are
being assembled inside Walmart’s OnePay app, valued above $4 billion, and Elon
Musk’s X Money, now licensed to handle payments
across 41 US states.
Both lean
on the same architecture, brokerage-as-a-service, or BaaS, plugging Zerohash
and DriveWealth into apps that already reach hundreds of millions of users.
OnePay
added Bitcoin and Ethereum trading via Zerohash in October 2025, then partnered
with DriveWealth at the end of that month to bring stocks and ETFs into the
same banking app.
X has
rolled out cashtags for stock and crypto charts and signaled plans to plug trading
directly into the timeline.
Meta’s $3 Billion Creator
Pipeline Lands in USDC, Not Libra
Meta
confirmed on April 29 that it had begun routing creator payouts in Circle’s
USDC stablecoin via Stripe’s Link wallet, with settlement on Solana and
Polygon. The pilot is currently limited to two markets selected for high
creator-economy density and weak cross-border banking infrastructure.
The company
paid out roughly $3 billion to creators globally in 2025, according to Fortune,
with growth of about 35% year-over-year. Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron said the
program is expected to expand to more than 160 countries by year-end 2026.
The setup
explicitly avoids the central feature that doomed Libra: Meta is not issuing
its own coin. Spokesperson Andy Stone has publicly pushed back on parallels to
the original 2019 project.
Meta has begun testing payouts to content creators using the USDC stablecoin on the Polygon blockchain, aiming to speed up payments and simplify cross-border transfers.
The program, currently piloted in Colombia and the Philippines, is expected to expand to over 160 countries,… pic.twitter.com/rHbAGOHjR3
— What’s Trending (@WhatsTrending) May 4, 2026
FinanceMagnates.com
coverage of Meta’s stablecoin re-entry strategy flagged that the company was racing
to launch before the GENIUS Act’s restrictions on Big Tech stablecoin issuance
fully take effect.
OnePay Hits $4 Billion
Valuation With a Stack That Looks Like Revolut
OnePay
began life in January 2021 as a joint venture between Walmart and Ribbit
Capital, the same VC firm behind Robinhood, Affirm and Credit Karma. After
acquiring fintechs Even and ONE, it rebranded to OnePay in March 2025.
Through
2024 and 2025, the company built out a stack that now matches or exceeds
Revolut on most consumer verticals. A 2024 funding round valued OnePay at $2.5
billion. A 2025 employee tender pushed the figure above $4 billion, according
to Bloomberg.
Scoring:
1.0 = live consumer product; 0.5 = exploring or in development; 0 = no product.
Verticals: Payments (P2P/wallet), BNPL, Crypto trading, Brokerage (stocks/ETFs), Banking/deposits, Insurance, Card products, SMB lending.
The stack is striking. OnePay runs high-yield savings via Coastal Community Bank, BNPL through Klarna, and earned wage access for 1.6 million Walmart associates. A Synchrony-Mastercard credit card replaced Capital One inside Walmart stores last fall.
Bitcoin and Ethereum trading via Zerohash went live in October 2025, followed weeks later by equity and ETF trading powered by DriveWealth, the same firm behind Revolut’s US offering.
The app was running $15 billion in annual payment flow and over $200 million in run-rate revenue by year-end 2024.
X Money Launches in 41
States With Brokerage in the Pipeline
Musk’s X
Corp has gone further than any other Magnificent-Seven-adjacent company toward
owning the financial primitives. X Money’s public beta began rolling
out in April after
months of delays.
The product
launched with FDIC-insured deposits via Cross River Bank, P2P transfers powered by Visa Direct, a Visa-issued metal debit card
with cashback, and a 6% APY on deposits, though PYMNTS noted it was unclear
whether the rate is permanent or promotional.
Today we’re rolling out the new Cashtags feature for web on X․com. Now X can be a core part of your trading terminal with real-time charts and posts for every asset. pic.twitter.com/QD8Tn4uj1l
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) April 30, 2026
The
brokerage angle is in development. X rolled out cashtags in the United States
and Canada on April 14, allowing users to tap “AAPL” or “BTC” inside the timeline and see real-time
price charts.
Linda Yaccarino, the Former CEO of X, Source: LinkedIn
Then-CEO
Linda Yaccarino said at Cannes Lions in June 2025 that users would soon be able
to “make investments and trades directly through the platform.” Smart Cashtags, which would route to
in-app crypto buying, are reportedly in development.
Musk
himself has framed X Money as “the place where all the money is.” The
architectural similarity to OnePay is unmistakable: X is plugging into licensed
banking and brokerage infrastructure rather than building its own.
Its
distribution moat is roughly 600 million monthly active users.
Apple, Google and Amazon
Quietly Pick Partnerships Over Licenses
The
contrast with the larger Magnificent Seven names is stark. Apple, the Big Tech
firm with the deepest financial-services footprint, has spent the past 24
months retreating to a partnership model.
In June
2024, Apple wound down Apple Pay Later, replacing it with global
integration of installment offers from Affirm and Citigroup inside iOS Wallet.
The CFPB fined Apple and Goldman Sachs a combined $89 million in October 2024
over Apple Card dispute-handling failures.
In January 2026, Apple confirmed JPMorgan
Chase as the new Apple Card issuer, with more than $20 billion in card balances
expected to transfer over a 24-month period, closing the chapter on a partnership
Goldman bankers had publicly disowned.
Google has
concentrated its push in India, where Flex by Google Pay, a UPI-linked
co-branded credit card with Axis Bank, launched in December 2025. Amazon’s
strategy is purely embedded:
Affirm provides BNPL at checkout, and Amazon Lending issues SMB
loans through Goldman Sachs, Lendistry, Parafin and fintech Slope. None of the
three has applied for a broker-dealer license in the past 36 months.
Why Big Tech Still Refuses
to Build Retail Brokerage
Apple,
Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have collectively launched zero retail
trading products since the failed Libra project in 2019. Regulatory friction is
the most cited reason.
Broker-dealer
licensing under FINRA and the SEC, Reg BI, payment-for-order-flow scrutiny, and
recent best-execution reforms create higher compliance costs than
money-transmitter licensing.
Arkadiusz Jóźwiak
“European
brokers don’t need to fear Apple,” Arkadiusz Jóźwiak, the financial analyst
and Editor-in-Chief at Comparic.pl, told FinanceMagnates.com. “They need to
watch the back door, the one Walmart and Musk are walking through with
off-the-shelf brokerage stacks.”
Reputational
risk is the second. Bankers who have pitched retail trading products to Big
Tech executives have described meetings ending on the same point: the
consumer-protection consequences of an Instagram or WhatsApp user losing money
on stocks are not a fight Apple or Meta wants to pick.
The third
is that brokerage-as-a-service makes ownership unnecessary. DriveWealth,
Alpaca, Bitpanda Technology Solutions and Zerohash now allow distribution
platforms to offer trading without holding the license.
Yahoo Finance’s one-click Coinbase
trading integration,
announced in February 2026, follows the same architecture.
Brokers Still See Revolut
as the Bigger Threat
For
European retail brokers, Big Tech remains a distant concern. Revolut, with
roughly 60 million users, €8.5 billion in customer assets, and a reported $150
billion IPO target, is the closer competitor.
Omar Arnaout, the CEO of XTB
XTB CEO
Omar Arnaout, speaking at Invest Cuffs in Warsaw, said he believed “Robinhood
probably won’t achieve success in Europe,” instead pointing to Revolut as
the standout competitor.
The
asymmetry, however, is plain in the user-base math. Walmart and X together
touch more than 850 million people on a weekly or monthly basis.
Robinhood
reported roughly 26 million funded accounts at the end of 2025, while
Interactive Brokers ended Q1 2026 with 4.4 million daily average trades.
If even a
small share of OnePay or X users open in-app trading accounts, the
customer-acquisition cost compression alone would meaningfully erode the funnel
that mid-tier brokers depend on.
For brokers
watching the Big Tech threat from across the Atlantic, the message of 2026 so
far is that the danger is no longer about Apple or Google launching a
stock-trading app.
It is about
Walmart, Musk and Shopify quietly assembling what those companies will not,
then turning their existing user bases into a customer-acquisition channel that
traditional brokers cannot match.
