Binance Co-CEO Richard Teng recently joined entrepreneur Raj Shamani on the business podcast Figuring Out to discuss how blockchain, crypto, stablecoins and artificial intelligence are reshaping financial services worldwide. Much of the conversation centred on Binance’s evolution from a cryptocurrency exchange into a financial super app, a single platform bringing trading, payments, savings and digital assets together in one place.
“Binance now gives users access to a growing suite of products that goes beyond crypto alone, including exposure to asset classes such as commodities, precious metals, stocks and other emerging opportunities,” said Teng.
One of the clearest themes to emerge was Teng’s view that the wallet, not the bank account, is becoming the central interface for people’s financial lives. “In the future people may not necessarily need a traditional bank account in the way earlier generations did: what they will need is a wallet,” said Teng.
Through a wallet, Teng said, a user could receive their salary, pay bills, send funds, invest across asset classes, access savings and yield products and manage a diversified portfolio all from one place. This will be supported with AI helping automate routine decisions and surface new opportunities.
While the conversation focused on global trends, several of the themes map closely onto conditions already unfolding across Africa. The continent is home to one of the world’s youngest, fastest-growing digital populations, and mobile money already reaches 40% of adults across Sub-Saharan Africa, the highest of any region, even as four in ten remain outside the formal financial system, per the World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 report.
Cross-border payments illustrate the opportunity well. Sending money into and across Africa remains among the most expensive in the world, and tools such as Binance Pay, part of Binance’s wider super app vision, are designed to let users send and receive value directly and around the clock rather than being limited to banking hours.
“Utility is one of the strongest practical arguments for crypto adoption,” said Teng.
Teng was also clear that crypto should not be thought of as a single-purpose technology. Beyond payments and investing, he pointed to its growing role in settlement, tokenisation and decentralised finance. “The script is still being written,” said Teng.
Teng addressed the tension between innovation and risk directly, noting that scams and fraud are not unique to crypto and have grown more sophisticated across digital finance generally. Drawing on his own background as a regulator, he argued for a balanced approach.
“Regulation that eliminates all risk by eliminating all activity does not serve users or economies,” said Teng.
The transition will not happen at the same pace everywhere. But for a continent where remittances remain costly and formal financial access is still out of reach for millions, Binance’s shift toward a wallet-led, AI-powered super app points to where finance is headed next.
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