Money isn’t just the cash in your wallet or a balance in a bank app anymore — it’s stablecoins, instant rails, and increasingly, AI agents making decisions on your behalf. To wrestle with all of that, TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is adding a brand-new venue called the Smart Money Stage, dedicated entirely to where fintech, payments, and artificial intelligence collide.
The event runs October 13–15 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, and the lineup reads like a who’s who of the money-movement world: leaders from Circle, Robinhood, American Express, Plaid, and Airwallex are all slated to take the stage.
The programming digs into four big questions. First up, The Future of Money Movement tackles how stablecoins and instant payments stack up against traditional banking infrastructure — where FedNow and private networks fit, and which regulatory hurdles still stand in the way. Panelists include Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Circle; Rodney Robinson, Co-founder and CEO of TabaPay; and Lotti Siniscalco, General Partner at Emergence.
Then there’s Winning the Modern Financial Consumer, featuring Robinhood’s Head of Product Abhishek Fatehpuria. Robinhood — now carrying a market cap of more than $90 billion — has grown from a trading app into a full platform covering investing, banking, credit, crypto, and prediction markets. The session zeroes in on what it takes to build trusted products that hold up under explosive growth.
The AI angle gets its own dedicated slot. AI, Trust & Verification in Financial Services looks at what happens when AI stops merely generating content and starts taking action — moving money, verifying identities, flagging fraud. Speakers include Hannah Bozian, VP of Agentic Partnerships & Strategy at American Express; Pedro Sanzovo, Head of Fraud and Identity at Plaid; and Victoria Zuo, Partner at QED Investors. Expect a frank conversation about why human judgment and transparency still matter when algorithms hold the keys.
Finally, Building the Infrastructure for Global Commerce hands the mic to Jack Zhang, Founder & CEO of Airwallex. Valued by its investors at $11 billion, Airwallex is constructing what it calls an AI-native financial operating system — the plumbing that lets companies move money across borders and embed financial products directly into their own platforms.
The through-line here is signal over spin. The Smart Money Stage is aimed squarely at founders and operators trying to figure out where consumer finance is actually headed — whether they’re building the next payments rail or sorting out how AI belongs in fraud and identity workflows.
Disrupt attendees also get the run of everything else the conference offers: networking, side events, and the rest of a sprawling speaker lineup, packed into three days at the heart of the startup community. The current pricing window is closing soon, so registration is the move if you want the best rates.
