Americas Fintech 3Q26 Preview: Weighing key investor debates and near-term earnings setups

Fintech shares have broadly underperformed in 3Q, driven in large part by the increase in rates and re-inflation in oil prices, which serve as both negative indicators for low-end consumer health and more fundamental macro headwinds for fintech lenders where funding costs face upward pressure. Consumer spending trends have broadly held in well, with low-end consumer wage growth continuing to serve as a cushion. Near term, focus will be on whether the shifting backdrop will derail structural market share gains across the group. Heading into earnings, we are short-term positive on the setup for CHYM, XYZ, RELY and UPST, and more cautious on SOFI, KLAR and WU. We spotlight several mini-deep dives: a bottom-up risk loss build for XYZ, a sizing of the Apple Upgrade program for KLAR, a build out of the high value sender opportunity for RELY, and a bottom-up build of UPST contribution margin improvement in the back half. Our XYZ bottom-up build forecasts total losses of $589mn in 3Q and $602m