In the emerging landscape of digital finance, Big Four consultancy firm EY has focused on what it believes is the next defining frontier is wallets.
According to Mark Nicholls, Principal at EY, wallets are rapidly becoming the key interface for the next era of financial services, and not just tools for holding cryptocurrencies.
“The wallet is the strategy,” Nichols, who co-leads the company’s digital asset advisory business, told CoinDesk in an interview. “Who owns the wallet, who provisions the wallet, will win the customer relationship.”
Nichols and her West Coast counterpart, Rebecca Corvette, see wallets as more important than infrastructure. They are the gateway to storing, transferring and managing token value in a world where financial instruments, from payments to private loans, are increasingly proliferating, he said.
Not just custody: Wallets as the hub of tokenized finance
The vision is broad. Far from being a niche utility for crypto enthusiasts, wallets are becoming the connective tissue of a broader tokenized financial system. According to Corvette, co-leader of EY’s digital asset advisory business, wallets will soon be indispensable for retail investors, asset managers, treasurers, and even commercial banks.
“They’re going to be the access point for everything – payments, tokenized assets and stablecoins,” he said.
EY’s perspective projects wallets as the new bank accounts of the future, including services not only for individuals, but also for corporate and institutional investors who require sophisticated integration with risk systems, compliance tools, and real-time capital flows.
The implication is clear: whoever controls the wallet controls the relationship. For financial institutions that are already losing ground to crypto-native platforms, this shift is existential.
Beyond Liquidity: The Real Promise of Tokenization
The sweeping shift to tokenization is often framed as a play for liquidity, but EY believes that narrative understates the real impact. “It’s not just about liquidity,” says Nichols. “Liquidity isn’t everything, it’s about the utility that onchain finance enables.”
What EY sees instead is the emergence of blockchain as a real-time infrastructure for financial markets, allowing programmable transaction chains, and fundamentally reshaping the way capital is managed. Tokenization certainly enables atomic settlement, but its real power lies in margin optimization and operational efficiency.
Nicholas points to scenarios where companies could use stablecoins or tokenized assets to complete margin calls more frequently and accurately. This, in turn, reduces initial margin requirements, freeing up capital for investment. “It’s about better risk alignment and real-time capital management,” he says. “And the wallet becomes the gateway to making this possible.”
A decade in the field: EY’s deep crypto bench
While some companies are racing to get ahead, EY has been building in the digital asset space for more than 12 years. Its early investments in crypto-native audit and compliance practices now include thousands of professionals supporting everything from hedge fund tax returns to tokenized M&A advice.
“We’ve worked with every client profile – big banks, asset managers, exchanges, digital natives, infrastructure providers,” says Nicholls. “And have been working in the digital asset ecosystem for over a decade.”
EY’s hedge fund audit business was one of the earliest to support crypto, and its advisory team has helped companies prepare for public listings and the complex regulatory environment. The firm has developed specialized services for wallet monitoring, onchain compliance, and token-native tax reporting. It continues to advise traditional financial institutions on how to design secure, compliant digital asset strategies, especially as they begin to develop or integrate wallet infrastructure.
Wallet for all: segment-by-segment view
EY is clear that wallet needs are not monolithic. Consumers want seamless UX and secure access to payments and crypto. Corporates need integration with fiscal functions and regulatory compliance across different jurisdictions. Institutional clients demand connectivity and embedded risk tooling from secure custody, decentralized finance (DeFi) and staking products.
EY argues that self-custody will not go mainstream. The average user or institution does not want to manage their own private keys. Instead, trusted wallet providers will emerge, banks, fintechs, or specialized custodians; Each one tailors its offering based on the segment it serves.
Then, provisioning a wallet becomes a strategic imperative. Whether companies choose to build their own, acquire providers or form partnerships, wallets are the new gateway to financial services. Companies that act now will have lower customer acquisition costs in the future and own a more defensible position in the digital asset ecosystem.
Regulation: a catalyst, not a barrier
One of the most persistent misconceptions about tokenization is that regulation is a barrier. But EY leaders disagree. “We already have the regulatory framework in place in the key markets, and the passage of market structure legislation, along with the wider industry, will allow the remaining issues to be resolved,” says Nicholls. “A security is a security, a thing is a thing. Blockchain is technology.”
In the US, the Genius Act and existing Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) exemptions provide pathways for compliant tokenized products. Globally, jurisdictions are racing to attract digital asset innovation with evolving licensing regimes. Although reconciliation is still a work in progress, the pace is unmistakable.
EY sees this moment as a call to maturity, an inflection point where the infrastructure is catching up to the vision. “We’re past the experimentation phase,” says Corvette. “Now it’s about secure, scalable implementation.”
Rethinking asset management from the ground up
Perhaps nowhere is the impact of tokenization and wallet infrastructure more profound than in asset management. A typical fund currently requires a distribution network, an investment team, a custodian, a fund administrator and regulatory reporting channels. With tokenization and smart contracts, much of that stack becomes programmable and potentially obsolete.
“Asset managers just want to build the best portfolio,” says Nicholls. “Blockchain lets them do that without any legacy hassles.”
By tokenizing fund underwriters and embedding logic into smart contracts, asset managers can automate tasks such as distribution, compliance and reporting. This opens the door to lower fees, broader investor access and new types of products, particularly in private loans and options, where cost has historically been a barrier.
“From the unbanked to the broker-less, we are seeing more people gaining exposure to assets that were previously out of reach,” Corvette says. “He is powerful.”
The future of finance is onchain
Whether for crypto, payments, or tokenized assets, wallets will be the gateway to a new financial reality. Companies that ignore this risk becoming irrelevant. Those who adopt it will own the infrastructure and customer relationship at the heart of digital finance.
“The future of finance is on-chain,” says Nicholls. “And the wallet is at the center of it.”
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