Finance with the Jetsons: Ten Emerging Technologies Transforming Future Financial Systems
-
Reinhold P. LAMB Department of Accounting and Finance, Coggin College of Business, University of North Florida, USA
The Jetsons (1962) imagined a future characterized by automation, instant transactions, and technologies capable of anticipating and responding to human needs. Six decades later, advances in digital assets, artificial intelligence (AI), decentralized finance, programmable money, embedded finance, and next-generation payment technologies suggest that elements of this vision are increasingly becoming part of financial infrastructure. This study examines ten emerging financial technologies through an integrative and conceptually oriented review, focusing on their collective contribution to increasingly autonomous financial systems.
The analysis organizes these technologies across three interconnected dimensions: programmable financial infrastructure, intelligent and autonomous financial decision-making, and ambient financial interfaces. Their convergence may progressively automate financial decision-making and execution, reduce transactional friction, and reconfigure rather than eliminate financial intermediation, while generating challenges related to accountability, privacy, systemic risk, governance, and financial inclusion.
The study develops an integrative conceptual framework in which autonomous finance is understood as an emergent outcome of interactions among programmable, intelligent, and ambient financial capabilities, rather than as the consequence of any single technology. The framework highlights how their convergence may reshape financial systems and the institutional and governance conditions influencing this transition.
Copyright: © The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms and conditions of the license Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
Article info: Received: 25 March, 2026; Revised: 2 May, 2026; Accepted: 22 May, 2026; Published: 27 May, 2026.
Lamb, R. P. (2026). Finance with the Jetsons: Ten Emerging Technologies Transforming Future Financial Systems. Journal of Emerging Technologies for Society, Volume I, 1(1), 51-65. https://doi.org/10.57017/jets.v1.iss1.03
CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement: Lamb, R.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal Analysis, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing.
Acknowledgments/Funding: The author received no external funding for this research and has no acknowledgments to declare.
Conflict of Interest Statement: The author declares no conflict of interest.
Data Availability Statement: No new data were created or analysed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.
Ethical Approval Statement: This study is theoretical and conceptual in nature and did not involve human participants, personal data, or animal subjects. Therefore, ethical approval was not required.
Use of AI Statement: AI (Claude) was used to support language editing and to assist in identifying potentially relevant literature. The author reviewed and retained full responsibility for the final content of the manuscript.
Allen, F., Gu, X., & Jagtiani, J. (2022). Fintech, cryptocurrencies, and CBDC: Financial structural transformation in China. Journal of International Money and Finance, 124, 102625. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2022.102625
Auer, R., & Böhme, R. (2020). The technology of retail central bank digital currency. BIS Quarterly Review, March 2020, 85–100. https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt2003j.pdf
Bahoo, S., Cucculelli, M., Goga, C., & Mondolo, J. (2024). Artificial intelligence in finance: A comprehensive review through bibliometric and content analysis. Financial Innovation, 10(1), 73. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40854-024-00584-x
Barrdear, J., & Kumhof, M. (2022). The macroeconomics of central bank digital currencies. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 142, 104148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jedc.2021.104148
Belanche, D., Casaló, L. V., & Flavián, C. (2019). Artificial Intelligence in FinTech: Understanding robo-advisors adoption among customers. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 119(7), 1411–1430. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-08-2018-0368
Cao, L. (2022). AI in finance: Challenges, techniques, and opportunities. ACM Computing Surveys, 55(3), Article 64. https://doi.org/10.1145/3502289
Cong, L. W., & He, Z. (2019). Blockchain disruption and smart contracts. The Review of Financial Studies, 32(5), 1754–1797. https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhz007
Corbet, S., Lucey, B., Urquhart, A., & Yarovaya, L. (2019). Cryptocurrencies as a financial asset: A systematic analysis. International Review of Financial Analysis, 62, 182–199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2018.09.003
Dresner, A., Murati, A., Pike, B., & Zell, J. (2022). Embedded finance: Who will lead the next payments revolution? McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/embedded-finance-who-will-lead-the-next-payments-revolution#/
Fauzi, M. A., Paiman, N., & Othman, Z. (2020). Bitcoin and cryptocurrency: Challenges, opportunities and future works. Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business, 7(8), 695–704. https://doi.org/10.13106/JAFEB.2020.VOL7.NO8.695
Fritz-Morgenthal, S., Hein, B., & Papenbrock, J. (2022). Financial risk management and explainable, trustworthy, responsible AI. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 5, 779799. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.779799
Gomber, P., Koch, J. A., & Siering, M. (2017). Digital finance and FinTech: Current research and future research directions. Journal of Business Economics, 87(5), 537–580. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-017-0852-x
Gong, H. (2026). AI agents in financial markets: Architecture, applications, and systemic implications. FinTech, 5(2), 34. https://doi.org/10.3390/fintech5020034
Kandir, S. Y., & Haseki, M. I. (2026). Open banking infrastructure and Banking-as-a-Service adoption: A multi-level competitive dynamics framework with panel evidence. FinTech and Innovation, 6(2), 26–35. https://doi.org/10.54216/FinTech-I.060204
Liébana-Cabanillas, F., Kalinic, Z., Muñoz-Leiva, F., & Higueras-Castillo, E. (2024). Biometric m-payment systems: A multi-analytical approach to determining use intention. Information & Management, 61(2), 103907. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2023.103907
Liu, S., & Yang, C. (2024). Spot cryptocurrency ETFs: Crypto investment products or stepping stones toward tokenization. Finance Research Letters, 69, 106150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2024.106150
Orús, R., Mugel, S., & Lizaso, E. (2019). Quantum computing for finance: Overview and prospects. Reviews in Physics, 4, 100028. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.revip.2019.100028
Sazandrishvili, G. (2020). Asset tokenization in plain English. Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance, 31(2), 68–73. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22432
Schiansky, P., et al. (2023). Demonstration of quantum-digital payments. Nature Communications, 14, 3849. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39519-w
Zetzsche, D. A., Arner, D. W., & Buckley, R. P. (2020). Decentralized finance (DeFi). Journal of Financial Regulation, 6, 172–203. https://doi.org/10.1093/jfr/fjaa010