Chief Digital and Client Experience Officer
Synovus
Digital wallets are rapidly becoming the primary interface for consumer spending, digital identity, loyalty and emerging real-time and tokenized payment rails. As the financial industry moves into 2026, the acceleration of wallet adoption is no longer a trend at the margins—it’s reshaping the economics, customer relationships, and competitive dynamics of retail and commercial banking. This panel brings together leaders from banking, payments, fintech, and big tech to unpack what’s driving the surge and how banks must respond.
The panel will delve into the drivers behind wallet dominance, the shift from card rails to platform- and real-time-centric payments, how wallets are rewriting the bank-customer relationship, and the strategic implications for banks and the priority to establish wallet-first customer strategies. Bankers will leave with a clear understanding of the forces accelerating digital wallet adoption, the threats and opportunities it creates for banks, and a pragmatic framework for building wallet-ready capabilities and partnerships that strengthen customer engagement rather than weaken it.