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There is a paradox taking shape: the less consumers notice the technology, the greater the complexity required to sustain the experience tends to be
Perhaps the best financial experience is the one consumers barely notice. Financial services are no longer necessarily a destination and are becoming part of the journey. Instead of interrupting what they are doing to access another app or follow a sequence of steps, consumers are beginning to encounter financial services at the moment and in the environment where they are needed.
In Brazil, Pix is an example of how simple experiences can quickly transform habits. More than 170 million individuals have already used the payment method, equivalent to around 80% of the population, according to the Central Bank of Brazil. In May 2026, there were more than 7 billion transactions. What began as a new way to transfer money and make payments has become a natural part of the daily lives of millions of Brazilians.
Now, this evolution is extending to the experience of the transactions themselves. With payment initiation journeys without redirection in Open Finance, for example, it is possible to make a payment without leaving the environment where the purchase is taking place to access the app of the institution where the consumer holds an account.
This is the same logic driving embedded finance. Payments, credit, insurance, and other financial products are being incorporated into platforms whose core business is not financial services. McKinsey estimates that, in Europe alone, this market could exceed €100 billion in revenue by the end of this decade.
For consumers, the result is an increasingly less noticeable boundary between a financial activity and the journey that originated it. Payment happens at checkout, credit appears at the moment of purchase, and insurance can be offered while booking a trip. The service still exists, but it no longer requires users to consciously “go to the bank” to access it.
The simpler the experience, the more sophisticated the infrastructure behind it
There is a paradox in this transformation: the less consumers notice the technology, the greater the complexity required to sustain the experience tends to be. A transaction completed in seconds may involve authentication, processing, risk analysis, fraud prevention, information exchange among different players, and settlement. Everything needs to work in an integrated way so that, from the consumer’s perspective, the experience feels simple.
For this reason, making financial services increasingly invisible does not reduce the importance of infrastructure. On the contrary, it makes this layer even more strategic. APIs, interoperability, real-time processing, security, and scalability are no longer just technical matters and begin to determine the quality of the experience being offered.
For companies in the sector, this requires a change in perspective. Customer experience can no longer be considered only at the visible layer of the journey. It begins with the ability to integrate systems, make services available across different environments, and respond quickly to new consumer behaviors. A simple interface does little good if, behind it, fragmented structures make integrations difficult or turn every evolution into a slow and complex process.
Preparing for this scenario therefore involves building a more flexible and interoperable infrastructure, capable of connecting different solutions without compromising security, availability, and scale. It also means viewing technology less as a support function and more as part of the customer relationship strategy: every well-executed integration, every second saved, and every point of friction eliminated contributes to the perception customers will have of that brand.
The bank is changing places
In this scenario, perhaps the question is not whether the bank of the future will disappear, but where financial services will be. Increasingly, they will be inside an e-commerce platform, a marketplace, a mobility platform, business management software, or experiences that today we do not even directly associate with the financial system.
This also changes the competitive landscape. Being present no longer means simply having the most complete app. It increasingly involves the ability to offer the right service, in the right context, with as little friction as possible.
For those offering these services, the question is no longer only “which financial product should we make available?” but also “when does it make sense for the customer, and how can we deliver it in the most natural way possible?”
This does not mean the end of banks or their channels. It means there will be more and more moments when consumers can meet a financial need without having to interrupt their journey to do so. The future of financial services may not be about creating places for consumers to go, but about being present exactly where they already are.
This article was written by Sérgio Junqueira, Customer Success Director at Evertec Brazil, and was originally published in Cliente SA.
