Disrupting Factors Ensure That Banking in Canada Will Never Be the Same

For decades, the pace of change in Canada’s banking industry was predictably glacial.

Competition was controlled, and the Big Banks were largely unthreatened—not by scrappy upstarts, nor by groundbreaking technology.

But in 2025, fintech startups are counted by the hundreds, if not thousands, and powerful tech is sweeping global sectors by storm.

It’s probably now safe to say that, in Canada…

…Big Banking Will Never Be the Same

Two things guarantee that banking in Canada will never be the same.

The first thing is that a steadily growing army of fintech upstarts, such as Wealthsimple and KOHO, are increasingly challenging incumbent institutions amid a rapidly evolving landscape of digital transformation and economic uncertainty.

Since its founding in 2014, Wealthsimple has persistently pushed for “The End of Banking,” with the Toronto company’s chief executive officer declaring repeatedly that Wealthsimple does not want to become a bank—they want to be something better.

And that is just one example of hundreds as more companies continue to surface with intent to rival traditional institutions.

The other factor ensuring permanent change is that the Big Banks themselves are also undergoing an evolution.

That evolution is being powered by the emergence of artificial intelligence technologies that even the stodgiest old firm cannot afford to ignore in 2025, let alone the future.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce recently unveiled the official launch of an in-house generative artificial intelligence platform, CIBC AI, for example.

The platform, first piloted in 2024, launched to help drive further productivity across the organization.

Not long after, TD Bank Group unveiled TD AI Prism, a proprietary artificial intelligence foundation model designed to reshape how the bank predicts customer needs.

Built in-house, Prism integrates large-scale AI capabilities with cloud-based banking data.

While such initiatives may seem relatively modest at first, keep in mind these are still the infant days of AI, with further transformation ahead a near certainty. Many entities remain highly motivated to advance the tech and expand its impact much more dramatically.

For example, Vanguard has unveiled a new research initiative in Canada that aims to advance AI research and innovation for the financial services industry, through which Labs composed of university professors and students will collaborate with AI experts to develop solutions and insights to address business challenges across the finance sector.

These two things guarantee that banking will never be the same—but there are other factors at play, too.

To wit:

The Crypto Craze Continues

While the era of ape-based non-fungible tokens has entered meme history as remarkable lore, cryptocurrency remains very much real and growing.

Led by the original pioneer, Bitcoin, smaller and younger coins are finding their time to shine in the mainstream spotlight in 2025.

The most recent example in Canada is XRP.

Four years ago, Purpose Investments made history by launching the Purpose Bitcoin ETF in Canada. Purpose, which today has many crypto funds, launched an XRP ETF in June.

And they were not alone.

Building on Bitcoin and Ethereum offerings, Evolve also this month launched an XRP ETF. As did 3iQ.

Developed by Ripple Labs back in 2012 as a low-cost cross-border payments technology, XRP is today the third-largest coin by global market cap at $140B—well ahead of many alternative coins but also still far behind the mainstream adoption of Bitcoin, whose market cap is north of $2 trillion.

“XRP is built for real-world utility, enabling fast, low-cost cross-border payments and decentralized exchange functionality,” explains Elliot Johnson, Chief Investment Officer at Evolve.

Since 2015, XRP’s price has climbed from $0.02 to over $2.19, an increase of more than 10,000%.

Shopify offers another example of crypto’s normalization.