An updated edition of the Nov. 6, 2025 article.
Financial technology, or fintech, is reshaping the global financial landscape by redefining how individuals, businesses and institutions access and manage money. By combining finance with digital innovation, fintech has made financial services faster, more inclusive and efficient.
One of the most significant impacts of fintech is increased financial inclusion. Mobile banking apps, digital wallets and peer-to-peer payment platforms have enabled millions of unbanked and underbanked individuals to participate in the formal financial system, particularly in emerging economies. Services that once required physical bank branches can now be accessed through smartphones.
Fintech is also transforming payments and lending. Real-time payments, contactless transactions and blockchain-based solutions have reduced costs and enhanced transparency. Meanwhile, alternative lending platforms use data analytics and artificial intelligence to assess creditworthiness, allowing quicker loan approvals and broader access to credit for small businesses and individuals. In addition, fintech is driving innovation in wealth management and insurance. Robo-advisors offer low-cost, automated investment solutions, while insurtech firms provide personalized insurance products using data-driven insights.
Overall, fintech is not just enhancing traditional financial services but fundamentally changing them, creating a more connected, customer-centric and technology-driven global financial ecosystem. Therefore, stocks like StoneCo Ltd. STNE, Block, Inc. XYZ and PayPal Holdings, Inc. PYPL are attracting investor attention.
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StoneCo, the Brazilian fintech powerhouse, has been making decisive strategic moves, including divesting non-core software operations. This allows StoneCo to target more than 90% of its total addressable market, payments, banking and credit, estimated at BRL 100 billion in revenue opportunity.
StoneCo is a fintech operator that executes business with clarity, discipline and accelerates profitability. The company is reshaping itself into a more focused, higher-return platform, supported by rising client engagement, a fast-growing banking ecosystem and prudent yet expanding credit operations.
StoneCo’s MSMB (micro, small and medium business) payments segment continues to expand, with its active client base witnessing a steady rise. This, along with the rapid adoption of PIX QR Code transactions and steady growth in card payments, continues to boost MSMB total payment volume.
Likewise, STNE’s banking ecosystem is gaining traction, with a constant increase in active banking clients and higher client deposits. As the majority of these deposits are time-based, they provide the company with a stable, low-cost funding source that enhances margin resilience. Also, the company’s credit business is gaining traction.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for STNE’s 2026 sales and EPS implies year-over-year growth of 2.6% and 17.1%, respectively. The firm, at present, carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Block is building a powerful fintech ecosystem through its dual growth engines, Square and Cash App. Together, they deliver comprehensive solutions across payments, commerce, banking, investing and lending. The company is also rapidly expanding its partner base to scale its distribution network.
Square, the part of Block that serves merchants, continues to perform well. Its steady growth in gross payment volume (GPV) and gross profit shows strong business momentum. The company is also rolling out new capabilities, like Square AI, which provides data-driven insights to help sellers manage and grow their businesses in an increasingly competitive point-of-sale (POS) and software landscape. In the U.K., Square launched its Cash Advance program to help businesses access funds and further introduced a new portable POS device called Square Handheld.
Block’s growth is driven by Cash App, which has evolved from a simple payment tool into an all-in-one financial platform popular with younger users. It now offers payments, banking, commerce and Bitcoin services. The company has expanded Cash App with features like group payments, buy-now-pay-later via Afterpay, improved borrowing tools and Tap to Pay on iPhone, helping boost user engagement and business adoption.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for XYZ’s 2026 sales and EPS implies year-over-year growth of 10.7% and 40.3%, respectively. The company, currently, carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
PayPal, a long-time leader in digital payments, is evolving into a full-scale commerce platform. Its new PayPal Ads Manager enables small businesses to act as their own retail media networks, creating additional revenue streams. Meanwhile, PayPal Links simplifies peer-to-peer and business payments by allowing users to send or receive money through a shareable, one-time link.
PayPal World further expands its reach by unifying major payment systems and digital wallets, including PayPal, Venmo, Mercado Pago, Tenpay Global and NPCI’s UPI, on a single platform. This gives merchants access to billions of potential customers while offering consumers seamless, cross-border wallet acceptance.
PayPal is also pushing into AI-driven agentic commerce through partnerships with Anthropic, Salesforce and OpenAI, alongside deeper crypto integration via its PYUSD stablecoin and Pay with Crypto feature. Together, these initiatives extend PayPal’s role far beyond payments, positioning it as a core infrastructure player in the next generation of digital commerce.
Venmo is PayPal’s go-to platform for young, affluent, digitally native users and a key driver of total payment volume growth. Branded experiences, especially online checkout and omni-channel payments, continue to grow steadily, with debit card and tap-to-pay usage expanding rapidly. Together, Venmo and branded experiences form PayPal’s strongest growth pillars across digital and in-store payments.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for PYPL’s 2026 sales and EPS implies year-over-year growth of 5.2% and 9.7%, respectively. The company carries a Zacks Rank #3 at present.
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PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PYPL): Free Stock Analysis Report StoneCo Ltd. (STNE): Free Stock Analysis Report Block, Inc. (XYZ): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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