How to build a fintech without spending millions on licenses? Until now, building a fintech required slow and expensive licenses. Smart accounts unlock a completely new way of building financial applications at a fraction of the cost. Here’s how they work ↓

Holding user funds means perpetually acquiring expensive licenses: • $100K–$2M per U.S. state • €350K+ in the UK • €300K–€1M+ in the EU And it’s not just the cost — it’s the time. Each license can take 6+ months. These regulatory barriers create an impossible choice for new fintechs: massive compliance overhead or build limited products that can't access modern financial services.

Smart accounts solve this by separating custody from functionality. Users keep control of funds while smart account logic enables modern finance on stablecoin rails: • Yield • Payments • Trading • Card programs • Agentic workflows No FBOs. No handling funds. No regulatory drag.

Smart accounts don't just enable modern financial products — they remove single points of failure with multi-key setups that abstract complexity while enabling secure access and recovery. A standard 2-of-3 smart account setup could include: 1) An MPC provider such as @turnkeyhq @privy_io @FireblocksHQ or @dfnsHQ. 2) A passkey secured by device biometrics. 3) A recoverable key with limited, approve-only permissions.

Smart accounts enable better products for users while unlocking revenue streams for builders, including: • Yield orchestration • Transaction fees from programmable payments • Interchange and FX from global card programs • Trading fees from token and asset swaps

Ready to build a fintech using smart accounts to launch 10x faster? Get started with Grid — our suite of open finance APIs for stablecoins. Open finance APIs powered the last wave of fintech; Grid does the same for the stablecoin era — replacing legacy banking integrations with a single interface for self-custodial smart accounts, payments, cards, yield, and agentic workflows.