Tarik Erk, Head of MENAT & Senior Executive Officer Abu Dhabi at Binance, outlines how changes to the cyber threat landscape have impacted the financial ecosystem and the role of apps within it.
For years, the promise of financial technology was that it would make managing money simpler. Instead, for many people, it created another kind of complexity.
We invest through one platform, save through another, make payments through a third, send money internationally through a fourth, and move between banks, brokers, wallets and exchanges to access different markets. Every additional service brings another account, another interface, another verification process and, importantly, another point at which security and trust have to be established.
The next evolution of finance cannot simply be more apps.
It has to be a better financial ecosystem: one that brings together the different ways people manage, move, grow and use their money, while making security fundamental to that experience. This is the idea behind the financial super app. And it is increasingly where digital finance is heading.
Over the past decade, crypto has moved steadily from the margins of the financial system toward its infrastructure. Regulatory frameworks have developed, institutional participation has expanded, stablecoins have grown into important payment and settlement rails, and blockchain technology is increasingly being used to connect people with financial products that extend far beyond buying and selling cryptocurrencies.
The boundary between traditional and digital finance is becoming less meaningful to the end user. People increasingly expect to move between digital assets, stablecoins, fiat currencies, payments, savings and global markets without having to think about the infrastructure underneath them.
That convergence is particularly significant in emerging markets, including across the Middle East and North Africa, where cross-border economies, digitally native populations and demand for more accessible financial services are accelerating the shift.
The opportunity is bigger than crypto adoption. It is about building financial infrastructure that can give more people access to payments, savings, investment opportunities and global markets through fewer barriers.
But there is a condition attached to that opportunity: access without security is not progress.
As financial platforms become more integrated, the responsibility placed on them becomes greater. If users are going to manage more of their financial lives in one ecosystem, that ecosystem cannot simply offer more products. It has to demonstrate that it can protect people at the same scale at which it serves them.
This is why security is becoming one of the defining questions in the race to build the financial super app.
The threat landscape itself has changed dramatically. Financial fraud is no longer limited to poorly written phishing emails or obvious scams. Artificial intelligence has made social engineering more convincing, deepfakes more accessible and fraudulent activity easier to execute at scale. The response therefore has to evolve just as quickly.
At Binance, AI is increasingly being deployed not only to improve the financial experience, but to defend it. In the first half of 2026 alone, Binance’s AI-driven risk systems helped protect more than 7.7 million users from US$4.64 billion in potential losses. These systems form part of a broader security architecture designed to identify suspicious behaviour and intervene before potential threats become actual losses.
Binance uses more than 100 dedicated AI models across over 24 security initiatives, monitoring transactions, behavioural patterns and external threat signals to identify potential fraud in real time. Depending on the risk detected, protections can range from warnings and risk assessments to withdrawal pauses and blocking transfers to malicious addresses.
Technology, however, is only one layer of trust.
As digital finance becomes part of the mainstream financial system, security must sit alongside compliance, regulatory engagement, law-enforcement cooperation and consumer education. Binance has responded to more than 313,000 law-enforcement requests to date, including 36,235 between January and June 2026. Funds recovered or frozen by law-enforcement partners with Binance’s support have now surpassed US$1 billion all-time.
This matters because the financial super app should not be understood simply as an app with a very long product menu. Its real value is integration.
Historically, managing a full financial lifecycle could require a bank, broker, payment provider, investment platform, international transfer service, educational resources and separate custodians for different asset classes. The financial super app collapses much of that fragmentation into a connected experience.
Binance’s own evolution illustrates how quickly that model is taking shape.
Nine years ago, Binance began as a crypto exchange. Today, the ecosystem spans trading, earning, payments, transfers, spending, Web3 access, education and access to a growing range of digital and traditional financial opportunities through a unified account.
The scale is already significant. Binance serves more than 322 million users globally and has processed more than US$156 trillion in all-time trading volume across its products.
But scale matters most when it translates into utility.
Binance Pay has integrated national QR-code payment systems across six countries. Binance Card is available in 36 countries. In the first half of 2026 alone, Binance’s fiat rails processed US$83.3 billion, up 29% from the same period a year earlier.
At the same time, the platform is expanding beyond crypto-native markets. Users can access traditional market exposure through products including TradFi perpetuals, direct stocks and tokenized securities alongside digital assets. Since March 2026, TradFi products on Binance have generated more than US$80 billion in monthly trading volume, pointing to growing demand for traditional and digital markets to exist within the same financial environment.
Taken individually, these are products. Taken together, they represent something more important: the beginnings of an integrated financial infrastructure where people can trade, save, earn, pay, transfer, learn and access markets without constantly moving between disconnected financial worlds. That is what the financial super app ultimately represents.
Not the replacement of traditional finance by crypto, but the convergence of the two.
The practical test will be whether digital assets eventually become as invisible to the user as the infrastructure behind a card payment is today. Most people do not think about payment networks when they tap their phone at a checkout. They care that the transaction is fast, familiar and secure. The same will increasingly be true of blockchain.
People will not necessarily ask whether a payment travelled through traditional banking infrastructure, a stablecoin rail or a blockchain network. They will expect their money to move efficiently. They will expect access to global opportunities. And, above all, they will expect the systems handling their money to protect them. That changes the definition of innovation in finance.
Innovation is not simply giving users more things they can do.
It is allowing them to do more without forcing them to accept greater complexity, fragmentation or vulnerability in return. For Binance, becoming a financial super app therefore cannot only mean expanding from crypto into payments, savings, traditional assets and other financial services. It means building the security, compliance and risk infrastructure capable of supporting all of those activities at global scale.
Because the more connected finance becomes, the more valuable trust becomes. The next generation of financial platforms will compete on access, speed, cost and breadth of services. But ultimately, the platforms that earn a place at the centre of people’s financial lives will be the ones that can combine all of those things with something much harder to build: confidence.
The future of finance will not be defined by how many financial apps people have on their phones. It will be defined by how many they no longer need, and whether they can trust the one ecosystem bringing everything together.
Image Credit: Binance
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