Fintech and payments in Europe

What counts as fintech and payments here

Any company building technology for how money moves, is stored, lent or accounted for – payments infrastructure and acceptance, open banking and account connectivity, embedded finance, B2B payments and treasury, KYC and AML tooling, stablecoins and payment tokenisation, and the AI accounting and finance operations layer. We file wealth management, trading, capital markets infrastructure and crypto exchanges under the sibling vertical Wealth, capital markets and crypto; insurance under Insurtech; and pure compliance tooling under Regtech. Many companies carry two of these tags, which is correct – a payments company doing KYC belongs in both.

Family: Finance
Coverage since: 2018
Desks: 4 of 4
Reviewed: 21 Sep 2026

The four desks

Each is a live, filterable data page – the numbers move weekly

Ranked list

Fintech events 2027

Ten fintech conferences ranked by verified attendance – from Il Salone dei Pagamenti at 16,000 to the national fintech weeks in Copenhagen, Paris and London.

Live data

Funding rounds

Every European fintech round we have verified with the company or the lead investor, most recent first.

Verified funds

Investors

The 40 funds with a stated fintech thesis, ranked by published fund size – BlackFin, AVP, ISAI, Serena and the corporate venture arms of Europe's banks.

Startup directory

Who is building what, at which stage, in which country – filtered to fintech.

The 7 sub-themes

These are the tags actually applied to fintech records on Sesamers – filter any desk by them

Payments Open banking Embedded finance B2B payments KYC and AML Stablecoins Tokenisation

Where the companies are

Verified HQs from the most recent rounds on the funding desk

🇬🇧 United Kingdom London, Manchester Ryft, Quartz, Rightcharge 🇩🇪 Germany Frankfurt, Berlin Integral 🇨🇭 Switzerland Zurich, Zug ETFBOOK, Nextesy, Schuman Financial 🇪🇪 Estonia Tallinn Creem 🇫🇷 France Paris – where the investors are 7 of 8 ranked funds

The three debates

Where the industry disagrees with itself right now – each with a verdict from the data

Is European fintech capital moving from London to Paris?

Seven of the eight ranked fintech investors on Sesamers are Paris-based – BlackFin, AVP, ISAI, Serena, Seventure, BlackFin Tech and Iris Capital. London appears once, via Elevator Ventures' Vienna HQ not at all.

The case forThe French banking establishment has built a full venture stack around fintech: Caisse des Depots behind Iris, Natixis behind Seventure, AXA's spin-out AVP, and BlackFin as the sector's largest buyout house. That is institutional depth London's independent VCs do not replicate.

The case againstThe Paris skew is a data artefact. London funds publish fund size and ticket range less consistently, so they drop out of a size-ranked list. Three of the six most recent verified rounds on the funding desk are UK companies – Ryft in Manchester, Quartz and Rightcharge in London.

Where we land: Both are true in different layers. Paris has the institutional capital stack; the UK still has more companies raising. The ranking will rebalance as London fund records are enriched – do not read it as a capital migration yet.

Do stablecoins belong in fintech or in crypto?

Money20/20 Europe now runs stablecoin programming alongside open banking and payments. Frankfurt Digital Finance covers tokenisation with the ECB and Bundesbank ecosystem in the room.

The case forWhen the payment rails themselves are tokenised, stablecoins are payments infrastructure – the same buyers, the same regulators, the same use cases as cross-border B2B settlement.

The case againstThe exchanges, custody and trading layers remain a separate industry with separate risk. Filing them under payments confuses a regulated banking product with a speculative one.

Where we land: Sesamers files payment stablecoins and tokenised settlement under fintech, and exchanges, custody and trading under Wealth, capital markets and crypto. Companies doing both carry both tags. This mirrors how the events calendar has actually split.

Is AI accounting the next fintech wave or a SaaS category?

Integral raised an €18M Series A from Mosaic Ventures and Reid Hoffman for AI bookkeeping and payroll. It carries three tags: applied AI, fintech and SaaS.

The case forAccounting sits on top of bank data and payment flows – the same open banking rails that fintech built. The product is finance, the distribution is finance, the buyer is the CFO.

The case againstIt is workflow software sold on a subscription. The fact that the workflow is about money does not make it a fintech any more than a legal-tech tool is a law firm.

Where we land: The triple tag is correct and deliberate. The rounds are being led by generalist and AI investors, not fintech specialists, which suggests the market currently sees it as SaaS-first. Watch whether BlackFin Tech or AVP lead one – that would be the signal.

Three eras of European fintech

How the vertical got here

2015-2019

The challenger era

PSD2 opens the banks' APIs across the EU. Neobanks and payments companies raise at scale on the promise of taking retail customers from incumbents. The national fintech associations – Innovate Finance, France FinTech, Copenhagen Fintech – are all founded in this window and their conferences become the industry's calendar.

2020-2023

The infrastructure era

Open banking connectivity, embedded finance and B2B payments displace consumer apps as the growth story. Bank-backed venture arms proliferate: Raiffeisen's Elevator Ventures, Natixis behind Seventure, BRED behind Iris. BlackFin Tech's €390M Fund II closes in 2022 as the first European growth fund dedicated purely to fintech and insurtech.

2024-2026

The consolidation and AI era

BlackFin Capital Partners closes Fund IV at €1.8B in October 2024, Europe's largest ever financial-services buyout vehicle. AVP buys itself out of AXA in April 2025. Stablecoins move onto the Money20/20 main stage. AI accounting and finance operations companies raise from generalist AI investors, and the fintech tag starts appearing alongside applied AI on the same records.

Three ways in

Depending on who you are

I'm a founder raising

Match your stage to the ticket ranges on the investors desk – ISAI and Serena from €100K, Iris €1-8M, BlackFin Tech €3-30M
Check which of your national fintech week is next – they are where the local bank innovation teams actually show up
If you touch a regulated bank, Point Zero Forum is the one event where the regulators are in the room as participants
Log your round on the funding desk once announced – it feeds the investor edges

I'm an investor scouting

Sort the funding desk by date – the most recent rounds show who is raising and who led
The startups desk filters by sub-theme; payments and open banking are the deepest pools
Cross-reference against the Wealth and Insurtech siblings – a third of fintech records carry a second tag
Money20/20 Europe in June is the single densest room of fintech buyers and founders

I'm an operator or corporate

The events desk ranks by attendance – Salone dei Pagamenti for Italian banking, Nordic Fintech Week for the Nordic open-banking pilots
Elevator Ventures and Iris Capital show how bank-backed venture arms are structured if you are building one
Frankfurt Digital Finance is where tokenisation meets the German financial establishment
Every record links to the company's own site and LinkedIn – go direct

Who to know

Start on these records

BF BlackFin Capital Partners €4B AUM – Europe's largest financial-services buyout investor Paris AV AVP €1M to €150M – venture to growth from one firm Paris RY Ryft €23.3M Series B, Sep 2026 – the largest recent round Manchester IN Integral €18M Series A – AI accounting, Mosaic and Reid Hoffman Germany M2 Money20/20 Europe 7,500 attendees – the pan-European fixture Amsterdam, June EV Elevator Ventures Raiffeisen's venture arm – the CEE banking network Vienna

Five terms

The vocabulary you will meet on the desks

Open banking

Regulated access to bank account data and payment initiation through APIs, mandated in the EU by PSD2. The connectivity layer most European fintech infrastructure is built on.

Embedded finance

Financial products – payments, lending, insurance – delivered inside a non-financial company's product rather than by a bank directly. The dominant B2B fintech model since 2020.

EMI licence

Electronic Money Institution authorisation, the EU licence that lets a non-bank hold customer funds and issue payment instruments. Malta and Lithuania are the fastest routes; FinanceMalta's conference exists partly because of this.

KYC and AML

Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering – the identity verification and transaction monitoring every regulated fintech must run. A sub-theme in its own right, shared with Regtech.

Payment stablecoin

A tokenised currency used for settlement rather than speculation. Filed under fintech on Sesamers when the use case is payments; under Wealth and crypto when it is trading or custody.

Latest coverage

Reporting and analysis tagged to this vertical

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Articles tagged to this vertical

All verticals, by family

Twelve families – each carries its own icon and accent token

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Frequently asked

About this vertical and how we cover it

How many fintech startups does Sesamers track in Europe?

299 companies carry the fintech and payments tag, alongside 297 verified funding rounds and 40 investors with a stated fintech thesis. It is the largest vertical on the site.

What is the difference between fintech and 'Wealth, capital markets and crypto' on Sesamers?

Fintech covers how money moves, is stored, lent and accounted for – payments, open banking, embedded finance, B2B payments, KYC. Wealth covers investing, trading, capital markets infrastructure and crypto exchanges. Companies doing both carry both tags.

Which fintech event should a founder attend first?

Their own national fintech week, because that is where the local bank innovation teams and regulators actually turn up. Then Money20/20 Europe in June for the pan-European buyer density. The events desk ranks all ten by verified attendance.

Why are most ranked fintech investors in Paris?

Because those fund records publish size and ticket range, and the ranking is by published fund size. London capital is under-represented until those records are enriched – the funding desk shows UK companies raising at least as actively.

How often does this page change?

The four desks refresh weekly from the live database. The editorial sections – debates, eras, glossary – are reviewed quarterly or when a major round or fund close changes the picture.

Can I suggest a company, fund or event?

Yes. Use the suggest links on each desk. We verify before publishing; paid placement does not get you onto a ranking or directory.

Fintech and Payments in Europe