Meta'squiet rollout last week of USDC creator payouts in Colombia and thePhilippines, four years after the company sold its failed Diem stablecoin (formerly Libra) assets to Silvergate Bank for $182 million, has revived the old question ofwhether Big Tech is finally coming for retail finance.

The answerin 2026 is yes, but not from Apple, Google or Mark Zuckerberg.

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Theclearest competitive threats to Robinhood, Trading 212, eToro and Revolut arebeing assembled inside Walmart's OnePay app, valued above $4 billion, and ElonMusk's X Money, now licensed to handle paymentsacross 41 US states.

Both leanon the same architecture, brokerage-as-a-service, or BaaS, plugging Zerohashand DriveWealth into apps that already reach hundreds of millions of users.

OnePayadded Bitcoin and Ethereum trading via Zerohash in October 2025, then partneredwith DriveWealth at the end of that month to bring stocks and ETFs into thesame banking app.

X hasrolled out cashtags for stock and crypto charts and signaled plans to plug tradingdirectly into the timeline.

Meta's $3 Billion CreatorPipeline Lands in USDC, Not Libra

Metaconfirmed on April 29 that it had begun routing creator payouts in Circle'sUSDC stablecoin via Stripe's Link wallet, with settlement on Solana andPolygon. The pilot is currently limited to two markets selected for highcreator-economy density and weak cross-border banking infrastructure.

The companypaid out roughly $3 billion to creators globally in 2025, according to Fortune,with growth of about 35% year-over-year. Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron said theprogram is expected to expand to more than 160 countries by year-end 2026.

The setupexplicitly avoids the central feature that doomed Libra: Meta is not issuingits own coin. Spokesperson Andy Stone has publicly pushed back on parallels tothe original 2019 project.

Meta has begun testing payouts to content creators using the USDC stablecoin on the Polygon blockchain, aiming to speed up payments and simplify cross-border transfers.The program, currently piloted in Colombia and the Philippines, is expected to expand to over 160 countries,… pic.twitter.com/rHbAGOHjR3

— What's Trending (@WhatsTrending) May 4, 2026

FinanceMagnates.comcoverage of Meta's stablecoin re-entry strategy flagged that the company was racingto launch before the GENIUS Act's restrictions on Big Tech stablecoin issuancefully take effect.

OnePay Hits $4 BillionValuation With a Stack That Looks Like Revolut

OnePaybegan life in January 2021 as a joint venture between Walmart and RibbitCapital, the same VC firm behind Robinhood, Affirm and Credit Karma. Afteracquiring fintechs Even and ONE, it rebranded to OnePay in March 2025.

Through2024 and 2025, the company built out a stack that now matches or exceedsRevolut on most consumer verticals. A 2024 funding round valued OnePay at $2.5billion. A 2025 employee tender pushed the figure above $4 billion, accordingto Bloomberg.

Scoring: 1.0 = live consumer product; 0.5 = exploring or in development; 0 = no product. Verticals: Payments (P2P/wallet), BNPL, Crypto trading, Brokerage (stocks/ETFs), Banking/deposits, Insurance, Card products, SMB lending.

The stack is striking. OnePay runs high-yield savings via Coastal Community Bank, BNPL through Klarna, and earned wage access for 1.6 million Walmart associates. A Synchrony-Mastercard credit card replaced Capital One inside Walmart stores last fall.

Bitcoin and Ethereum trading via Zerohash went live in October 2025, followed weeks later by equity and ETF trading powered by DriveWealth, the same firm behind Revolut's US offering.

The app was running $15 billion in annual payment flow and over $200 million in run-rate revenue by year-end 2024.

X Money Launches in 41States With Brokerage in the Pipeline

Musk's XCorp has gone further than any other Magnificent-Seven-adjacent company towardowning the financial primitives. X Money's public beta began rollingout in April aftermonths of delays.

The productlaunched with FDIC-insured deposits via Cross River Bank, P2P transfers powered by Visa Direct, a Visa-issued metal debit cardwith cashback, and a 6% APY on deposits, though PYMNTS noted it was unclearwhether the rate is permanent or promotional.

Today we're rolling out the new Cashtags feature for web on X․com. Now X can be a core part of your trading terminal with real-time charts and posts for every asset. pic.twitter.com/QD8Tn4uj1l

— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) April 30, 2026

Thebrokerage angle is in development. X rolled out cashtags in the United Statesand Canada on April 14, allowing users to tap "AAPL" or "BTC" inside the timeline and see real-timeprice charts.

Then-CEOLinda Yaccarino said at Cannes Lions in June 2025 that users would soon be ableto "make investments and trades directly through the platform." Smart Cashtags, which would route toin-app crypto buying, are reportedly in development.

Muskhimself has framed X Money as "the place where all the money is." Thearchitectural similarity to OnePay is unmistakable: X is plugging into licensedbanking and brokerage infrastructure rather than building its own.

Itsdistribution moat is roughly 600 million monthly active users.

Apple, Google and AmazonQuietly Pick Partnerships Over Licenses

Thecontrast with the larger Magnificent Seven names is stark. Apple, the Big Techfirm with the deepest financial-services footprint, has spent the past 24months retreating to a partnership model.

In June2024, Apple wound down Apple Pay Later, replacing it with globalintegration of installment offers from Affirm and Citigroup inside iOS Wallet.The CFPB fined Apple and Goldman Sachs a combined $89 million in October 2024over Apple Card dispute-handling failures.

In January 2026, Apple confirmed JPMorganChase as the new Apple Card issuer, with more than $20 billion in card balancesexpected to transfer over a 24-month period, closing the chapter on a partnershipGoldman bankers had publicly disowned.

Google hasconcentrated its push in India, where Flex by Google Pay, a UPI-linkedco-branded credit card with Axis Bank, launched in December 2025. Amazon'sstrategy is purely embedded:

Affirm provides BNPL at checkout, and Amazon Lending issues SMBloans through Goldman Sachs, Lendistry, Parafin and fintech Slope. None of thethree has applied for a broker-dealer license in the past 36 months.

Why Big Tech Still Refusesto Build Retail Brokerage

Apple,Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have collectively launched zero retailtrading products since the failed Libra project in 2019. Regulatory friction isthe most cited reason.

Broker-dealerlicensing under FINRA and the SEC, Reg BI, payment-for-order-flow scrutiny, andrecent best-execution reforms create higher compliance costs thanmoney-transmitter licensing.

"Europeanbrokers don't need to fear Apple,” Arkadiusz Jóźwiak, the financial analystand Editor-in-Chief at Comparic.pl, told FinanceMagnates.com. “They need towatch the back door, the one Walmart and Musk are walking through withoff-the-shelf brokerage stacks."

Reputationalrisk is the second. Bankers who have pitched retail trading products to BigTech executives have described meetings ending on the same point: theconsumer-protection consequences of an Instagram or WhatsApp user losing moneyon stocks are not a fight Apple or Meta wants to pick.

The thirdis that brokerage-as-a-service makes ownership unnecessary. DriveWealth,Alpaca, Bitpanda Technology Solutions and Zerohash now allow distributionplatforms to offer trading without holding the license.

Yahoo Finance's one-click Coinbasetrading integration,announced in February 2026, follows the same architecture.

Brokers Still See Revolutas the Bigger Threat

ForEuropean retail brokers, Big Tech remains a distant concern. Revolut, withroughly 60 million users, €8.5 billion in customer assets, and a reported $150billion IPO target, is the closer competitor.

XTB CEOOmar Arnaout, speaking at Invest Cuffs in Warsaw, said he believed "Robinhoodprobably won't achieve success in Europe," instead pointing to Revolut asthe standout competitor.

Theasymmetry, however, is plain in the user-base math. Walmart and X togethertouch more than 850 million people on a weekly or monthly basis.

Robinhoodreported roughly 26 million funded accounts at the end of 2025, whileInteractive Brokers ended Q1 2026 with 4.4 million daily average trades.

If even asmall share of OnePay or X users open in-app trading accounts, thecustomer-acquisition cost compression alone would meaningfully erode the funnelthat mid-tier brokers depend on.

For brokerswatching the Big Tech threat from across the Atlantic, the message of 2026 sofar is that the danger is no longer about Apple or Google launching astock-trading app.

It is aboutWalmart, Musk and Shopify quietly assembling what those companies will not,then turning their existing user bases into a customer-acquisition channel thattraditional brokers cannot match.

This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.