The world of finance is facing a revolution that can only be compared in scale to the advent of the internet. The transition of banks from physical branch service to mobile applications has not yet finished, but a new stage of transformation is already beginning. We are talking about the shift from the Mobile-First model to the AI-First model. Alex Emelian, CEO of Simple Wallet and an expert in fintech innovation and decentralized finance, shared the essence of this technological shift and what benefits it will deliver to end consumers.
The End of the App Era?
Today, a convenient banking application is considered the pinnacle of user financial evolution. A few years ago, it was truly considered an achievement: having the ability to open an account in five minutes from the comfort of their home, or sending funds without visiting a bank branch. The demand for such operations continues to grow: according to SQ, 2.17 billion people worldwide used mobile banking in 2025, a 35% increase from 2020.
In Romania, internet banking penetration is about 28%, according to Eurostat. At the same time, the traditional market leader is already almost completely digitized: back in 2024, Banca Transilvania reported ~92% of clients using digital channels.
But we must be objective: banking applications, no matter how convenient and functional they are, have reached their limit. Yes, you no longer need to go to a branch to perform basic financial operations. But everything else remains traditional: apps take up too much time and attention. To perform the simplest action, you have to go through authentication, know the right section in the menu, enter data, confirm the action…
A mobile application may offer many functions, but its usage model remains approximately the same: with a large number of internal mandatory steps and fixed user behavior. Banks are traditional institutions, and behind the “fashionable facades” in the form of modern applications are hidden regulated operational processes. There is little room left for improvement.
That is why Mobile-First is being replaced by AI-First
“The world is moving towards a paradigm where banking applications are no longer the center of financial management: their place is taken by personal AI assistants. That is, it’s not the interface that is changing (as in most banking applications now), but the philosophy of resource management,” states Alex Emelian.
According to Gartner forecasts for 2024–2025, AI agent systems are becoming a trend in the digital economy. PwC analysts indicate that AI agents are capable of doubling the potential of intellectual labor. And McKinsey estimates that the implementation of AI automation in the financial sector can generate up to $4 trillion in value annually. Behind these data lies a simple truth: people are tired of managing their finances manually.
A New Definition of Money: What AI financing is Capable of
To understand the changes that await us in the near future, we should agree on the terminology. When we talk about “AI financing”, we do not mean a specific bank. Here we are talking about a fundamentally new architecture.
That is, it is not just another application where a neural network will answer the question “where is the nearest ATM.” It is a model where financial operations are managed not by a person through a smartphone, but by an artificial intelligence-based agent, integrated directly into the financial infrastructure via API.
The best way to describe this is through a metaphor. Imagine that a personal CFO is working on your smartphone, available 24/7. It never sleeps, analyzes thousands of parameters every second, and is focused exclusively on your benefits. Here are a few key features of such AI finance:
- Machine-readable financial products. All actions are available via API, not just through a visual interface.
- Autonomous operations. AI automates payments, makes transfers, and optimizes expenses, focusing on the goals of a specific user.
- Zero-interface finance. Most financial operations occur in the background: you only give the assistant basic commands such as “pay the electricity bill on time,” “set aside enough money for vacation,” etc.
- Investing and stock trading. Guided by financial plans and a specified degree of risk, the agent can identify opportunities to grow capital: investing funds in promising projects or conducting trades in the crypto or stock market.
Alex Emelian claims that this is the development vector the company has chosen for its own product—the fintech platform Simple. He notes:
“Here at Simple we are building a financial app for people powered by AI agents. Our vision is a world where your AI agent manages money more effectively than any banker.”
The Transition to AI Finance is Inevitable: Three Drivers of Change
There are factors that make the transition to a new logic of personal financial management inevitable. User fatigue, technological breakthrough, and the economics of automation converge at one point.
New User Habits
People are tired of micromanagement. The number of accounts, investment instruments, and applications is growing, and managing it all manually is becoming increasingly difficult. Unified platforms are almost absent: separate software solutions are needed for each type of finance. We are observing a transition from delegated finance: it is no longer enough for users to simply press “Buy” or “Transfer funds.” They seek to formulate intentions: “I want to buy a promising cryptocurrency,” “I want to grow capital and invest in real estate” — and then delegate their execution to the assistant.
Technological Changes
The growth of large language models (LLMs) has created a base for intelligent agents (ChatGPT, Gemini, and others). At the same time, Open Banking, PSD2/PSD3 standards are being implemented worldwide, which open access to bank APIs. These two waves are heading toward each other, creating the prerequisites for a “perfect storm” and the implementation of innovation.
Economics of Automation
Accenture studies demonstrate that 73% of banking operations can be automated. Artificial intelligence is capable of this: and it not only speeds up processes but also eliminates the human error and the risk of emotional decisions. What is most interesting is that the market is already ready for this. Deloitte surveyed the opinions of financiers and accountants: 80.5% of respondents believe that AI tools can become the standard in financial services within 5 years. A smaller portion of respondents is confident that everything will happen much faster.
Can Traditional Banks Become AI-First?
Why can’t the industry giants switch to the new model now? They have enough technological and financial resources to start a new digital revolution. So what is holding back the traditional “pillars of the market”? First of all, the foundation.
The fact is that the traditional banking system is architecturally outdated. Initially, it was built around the human operator, and later — around the smartphone user. Therefore, its typical characteristics are as follows:
- Closed infrastructure. Most actions in a traditional bank cannot be automated externally due to the lack of public APIs for managing operations (for example, complex money transfers or deposits).
- Bureaucracy. The implementation of innovations in a classic bank is the result of executing a strategy approved during defined periods (for example, once a year). Due to regulations and complex internal processes, adaptation to the agentic economy is extremely slow.
The BIS notes: AI can fundamentally change the financial system — and classic banks, if they do not modernize their infrastructure and procedures, risk being left behind.
What is the result:
- Banks offer reliability, but limit the freedom of financial management.
- At the same time, the crypto industry gave people freedom and the opportunity to store assets independently, but over time lost its simplicity.
- AI made it possible to automate processes and reduce dependence on people’s emotional behavior.
So the obvious solution is to combine the advantages of these three “worlds” and create the financial architecture of the future.
Simple: Fintech platform of the Future
“We are creating Simple as a response to modern challenges in Fintech,” comments Alex Emelian. It is an “operating system for value” — a product that combines artificial intelligence, crypto technologies, finance, and community into a new paradigm of a smart, open, and fair financial ecosystem. Its user interface is a personal AI assistant.”
Simple’s architecture is built on three levels. Each solves a fundamental problem of the modern digital economy.
First level: Borderless Finance
The basis of the system is Self-custody. In the Simple ecosystem, funds belong only to the users: not to banks, not to shareholders, and not to the state. Every asset holder owns them on the blockchain.
But unlike the complex world of cryptocurrencies, users here have convenient “rails” for applying assets in everyday life: withdrawing cryptocurrency into fiat, using bank cards, money transfers without borders. All infrastructure relies on APIs accessible to the AI agent. This makes the user experience truly borderless: finances do not depend on the state, currency, or a specific bank. The agent can execute commands: for example, “send money to a friend” or “pay bills.” At the same time, it will find the most profitable transfer options itself.
Second level: Smart Investing
Investing funds through traditional banking instruments is difficult: it often requires attracting additional expensive consultations. Simple democratizes the role of the financial director. The personal AI agent acts as a smart financial assistant. Therefore, it is enough for the user to choose a strategy and set the risk level: the agent suggests portfolio adjustments based on your strategy and regularly rebalances it.
The first benefit is obvious: the user is not obliged to look for assets themselves. But there is also a second level. A hypothetical scenario: the market falls at night while the investor is sleeping. In the near future the AI agent, noticing the volatility, may automatically convert part of the risky assets into stablecoins and aiming to protect value against volatility. This level of service was previously available only at Private Banking level, will soon be accessible to every Simple user.
Third level: Community Economy
Simple is a community-driven product. “We fundamentally do not spend budgets on advertising on Meta or Google. Instead, we reward users directly: with tokens, cashback, and in other formats. The power of the community independently ensures growth and marketing,” notes Alex Emelian.
This is a new peer-to-peer economy: people get rewarded by promoting a product they use themselves. The rewards are distributed among the participants, and not used to replenish the capital of technological giants.
One Day in 2030: How the AI Assistant Will Work
Let’s move a few years ahead. How will your typical day go? Here is a hypothetical optimistic forecast.
You wake up and receive a report from your personal agent, who has analyzed the latest transactions. For example:
“I took advantage of night discounts and renewed a Netflix subscription, saving 5%. I set aside $200 for your approval to invest.”
During the day, you plan a trip and tell the assistant: “Find me a hotel room in the center of Prague, budget up to 500 euros, review rating of 9 or higher. Book tickets for the trip for these dates.” The agent interacts with Booking.com via API, finds and books the room, pays for it, and also automatically buys an insurance policy and books train tickets.
In the evening, you want to buy a new gadget. The agent finds the best price, negotiates with the seller’s agent, and conducts the transaction.
That is, in the hypothetical year 2030:
- AI assistants will perform up to 80% of routine operations: regular payments, subscriptions, budget formation and distribution, searching for the best price, etc.
- Banks will turn into an “invisible layer”: users will interact not with them, but with agents through voice or text commands.
- A new type of interaction will appear between AI agents: they will be able to conclude transactions.
“In the future, when AI agents interact with each other, Simple will become the financial layer that can unite them: with enhanced security, transparently, and without intermediaries,” comments Alex Emelian.
New Rules of the Game: Security and Trust
The prospects are exciting and at the same time frightening: how safe is it to transfer control over finances and investments to artificial intelligence? And here the issues of security and trust become important.
The infrastructure of AI finance must be created based on the concept of “artificial intelligence + person.” That is, the agent should not receive unlimited access. Instead:
- The rules of the game, limits, and spending thresholds must be set by the user. For example, “Any purchase over $1000 requires exclusively my confirmation.”
- The agent can receive the right to sign only separate transactions. Blockchain technology makes it possible to configure these accesses.
- AI needs to be taught to justify its every action.
It is obvious that changes await the regulatory environment as well. Already now, the legal status of AI agents is being discussed in Europe, and the PSD3 directive is preparing the basis for more open and secure APIs. Simple, in this sense, is working ahead of the curve and creating an infrastructure that will meet the new safety standards.
The Economic Paradigm of the Future
“We are at the beginning of the journey. The transition to AI financing will not happen overnight. However, it is inevitable. The efficiency provided by automation is too high. Therefore, it is impossible to ignore it,” notes Alex Emelian.
AI financing is a new layer of financial infrastructure in which a person and an AI agent cooperate as one whole. The result is more efficiency and free time for the person for life, communication, and creativity.
As the CEO of Simple notes: “Our vision is a world where the AI agent manages money more effectively than any banker, assets are stored on the blockchain and accessible in any country in the world, and the community helps to earn and grow. This is a world where the financial app works for you — and not vice versa.”
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