SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—For years, credit unions have worried about deposit outflows to crypto exchanges, fintechs and online investment platforms.
But new research suggests they may be focusing on the wrong threat.
The bigger issue isn't that members are buying Bitcoin or moving money into stablecoins. It's that younger consumers increasingly view platforms such as Robinhood, SoFi, Coinbase, Fidelity and Schwab as their primary financial relationship—places where they can bank, invest, save, borrow and, increasingly, manage nearly every aspect of their financial lives.
According to a new Cornerstone Advisors report, nearly two-thirds of Zillennial investors—Gen Z and Millennials combined—have moved money out of deposit accounts for investment purposes, while 43% of Zillennials have transferred deposits into accounts for stocks, ETFs, crypto or other investments during the past year.
The findings point to what may be the next major competitive challenge facing credit unions: not merely retaining deposits, but retaining relevance.
"The misconception is that money is flowing out of credit unions primarily because people want stablecoins or crypto," said Kian Sarreshteh, founder and CEO of InvestiFi, which commissioned the research. "The reality is most of that money is moving because people want to invest."
Sarreshteh said many credit unions continue to view crypto as a niche product while overlooking a larger market shift that has accelerated over the past several years.
"What we've really observed is Americans are pushing deposits to platforms that can offer them everything they want to do from a financial-services perspective," he said. "People are sending money from their credit union or bank over to Robinhood, SoFi, Fidelity, Schwab or Coinbase and getting access to everything they want from a crypto standpoint, a self-directed investing standpoint and a robo-advisory standpoint."
The Cornerstone research reinforces that point. The report found fintechs captured 56% of all new checking and payments account openings in 2025, up from 49% the previous year. Individually, both SoFi and Cash App opened more new checking accounts than either community banks or credit unions.
A Fundamental Change
At the same time, only about one in five Gen Z and Millennial credit union members maintain a checking account with a credit union, while six in 10 have a checking account with a fintech or digital bank, according to the study.
Ron Shevlin, Cornerstone Advisors' chief research officer and author of the report, argues that the industry's competitive challenge has fundamentally changed.
"Credit unions need a new competitive mindset," Shevlin wrote. "The key to differentiation in today's market isn't designing a better payments account to compete with Chime, Cash App and Venmo—it's designing a better investing account that's integrated with the payments account."
The data suggest younger consumers increasingly see investing and banking as inseparable. Three-quarters of Zillennial investors expressed interest in investing directly from their checking account, while 45% of Millennials said they would be very interested in a checking account that integrated investing capabilities.
That finding stands out to Sarreshteh.
"Three out of 10 people said crypto by itself could make a credit union more attractive. Three out of 10 said traditional investing by itself could make a credit union more attractive," he said. "But when you look at investing directly from checking—being able to invest in securities and crypto without moving money to another platform—75% of Zillennials said that's something that would attract them."
The report found neither crypto nor traditional investing alone is enough. Only about three in 10 Zillennials said they would move their primary banking relationship to a credit union that offered crypto but not stocks or ETFs. Similarly, only about one-third said they would move their relationship to a credit union that offered traditional investing without crypto.
What consumers appear to want is the same integrated experience offered by the fintech firms increasingly competing for their deposits.
Sarreshteh points to Robinhood as perhaps the clearest example of that evolution.
"Robinhood started as a stock-trading app," he said. "Then they added crypto. Then they added banking. Now they're offering mortgages. SoFi started in lending and added investing and crypto. Coinbase started in crypto and is now moving into securities. They all took different paths, but they arrived at the same destination: the one-stop shop."
That trend helps explain another key finding in the Cornerstone research. While crypto receives much of the attention, stocks and ETFs remain the primary reason Zillennials move deposits out of financial institutions. Forty-three percent cited investing in stocks and ETFs as the reason they moved funds, compared with 34% who moved money to invest in cryptocurrency and 30% who moved funds into stablecoins.
The implication for credit unions may be significant.
Simpler Challenge
Much of the industry's recent discussion has centered on stablecoins, digital assets and whether credit unions should participate in emerging blockchain-based payment systems. Those issues remain important, particularly as regulatory clarity improves.
But Sarreshteh believes the more immediate challenge is simpler.
"If somebody transfers money to Coinbase today, the majority of the time they're not doing it to use stablecoins," he said. "They're doing it to invest."
That view aligns closely with Cornerstone's conclusion that the deposit threat is fundamentally an investing issue rather than a banking issue. The report argues that younger consumers are not abandoning financial institutions because they dislike banking. They are moving money because fintech platforms offer investing experiences that traditional institutions often cannot match.
As a result, Shevlin concluded that credit unions face a product problem more than a marketing problem.
"Zillennials flock to fintechs because the products are better suited to their needs," he wrote. "Credit unions don't offer what young consumers are increasingly looking for: an investing account that works as seamlessly as their payment account, from the same app, with the same login."