At first, you just want to check what FinTech means. A few minutes later, you have more questions than when you started.
At VirtusLab, we work with financial institutions and investment banks on the software behind their services. We've drawn on that experience and current industry research to answer ten questions that can help you get your bearings in FinTech.
What exactly does FinTech mean?
FinTech is short for financial technology. It describes changes to financial services made possible by technology. The change might be something you use yourself, such as a banking app, or a process that runs inside a financial institution. That's why the term can describe work done by an established bank as well as a newer company.
FinTech has a longer history than the name suggests. Cash machines let people withdraw money when their bank branch was closed. Online banking later gave them access to their accounts from home. Each changed what customers could do without visiting a branch. Today's apps build on decades of changes like these.
Say you're applying for a loan. A lender could ask you to share account data so it can check information relevant to your application. You see fewer fields to fill in. Behind the screen, however, the lender needs a system that can receive the data, apply its lending rules, and pass cases needing closer review to a person.
If you're building a financial product, it helps to look beyond the app. A form that customers can complete online may save them a trip to the branch. If your staff still have to copy every answer into another system, much of the work is happening the old way. FinTech can change that part of the service too.
What are the biggest FinTech companies?
Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, PayPal, and Revolut are among the biggest names in FinTech. Their 2025 results show how large these businesses have become:
Visa operates a global payments network. In October 2025, it reported 4.8 billion payment credentials worldwide.
Mastercard facilitated more than 175 billion transactions in 2025 through its network.
Stripe provides payment infrastructure to businesses. Companies using its platform generated $1.9 trillion in total volume in 2025. A tender offer announced in February 2026 valued the privately held company at $159 billion.
PayPal processed $1.79 trillion in payments in 2025. It reported 439 million active accounts at year's end.
Revolut ended 2025 with 68.3 million retail customers and reported $6 billion in annual revenue.
What are examples of FinTech?
FinTech includes services you use to compare financial products online and systems that help institutions carry out transactions. Some are built for customers. Others are used by the people inside a bank. At VirtusLab, we work on both kinds of technology. Examples include:
Financial comparison platforms: If you're looking for a mortgage in Italy, Facile.it lets you compare proposals from partner banks and estimate your monthly repayments. The company also helps customers compare insurance policies. Because Facile.it operates several brands, its editors need to manage content for different websites. At VirtusLab, we built a plugin that lets them do this within one system and control who can edit each site.
Networks for digital assets: Canton Network is one example. A bank can use it to build an application for tokenized securities and coordinate a transfer with the corresponding payment. The network controls which participants can see the transaction details. At VirtusLab, we work with Digital Asset on Canton's infrastructure, including preparations for upgrades to the network.
Trading applications: When a bank's client requests a price for a swap, sales staff and traders need to work from the same transaction details. The application we helped build gives them a shared place to enter those details and calculate a price. It also records changes made during the discussion. For the bank, that means less information has to be passed manually between spreadsheets and other systems before the trade is booked.
Underwriting research tools: An underwriter may need to review public information about a prospective client before making an assessment. We developed a prototype that finds relevant material and prepares a summary for the underwriter to check. In testing, it reduced the time spent gathering that information from about 20 minutes to one minute per case.
What is the FinTech ecosystem?
The FinTech ecosystem is the network of organizations and infrastructure through which financial technology reaches its users.
A payment app, for example, may connect to a banking partner that holds customer funds. An identity verification provider handles part of onboarding, while a technology partner helps maintain the application. Regulators oversee the activities within their remit.
Understanding these relationships helps you identify critical dependencies and plan how your service will respond if a provider becomes unavailable.
For a closer look at these relationships, read our guide to the FinTech ecosystem.
Is FinTech a good career?
FinTech can be a strong career choice if you enjoy solving technical problems with direct financial consequences. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 places FinTech engineers among the roles expected to grow fastest in percentage terms through 2030.
Product management and compliance also offer career paths within the sector. For engineers, domain knowledge adds value to software skills. Understanding how a payment settles helps you design a system that handles failed or delayed transactions correctly.
Before accepting a role, ask how production changes are reviewed and how responsibility for incidents is shared. Strong technical mentorship can help you develop skills you will use well beyond your first FinTech employer.
How is FinTech shaping the future of banking?
FinTech is bringing banking services into software customers already use. A business can initiate a payment from its accounting system through a bank's API. Its employees then handle the invoice and start the payment in the same workflow, while the bank carries out the financial operation.
That convenience depends on what happens after the customer clicks "Pay." The bank has to check the instruction and report its status back to the accounting system. If a payment fails, the business needs to know before it marks the invoice as settled.
FinTech is also changing how banks explore payments between institutions, especially across borders. These transactions can involve several banks and separate steps before the recipient receives the money.
Project Agorá, led by the Bank for International Settlements, tests a shared platform where tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves can be used to settle a cross-border payment together. In July 2026, participants completed transactions involving real value under controlled conditions. Project Agorá is still a prototype, but the test showed that banks can settle both sides of a cross-border payment on a shared platform.
How do FinTech companies make money?
FinTech companies earn revenue by charging for a financial service or for the technology that enables it. Common models include:
Transaction fees: A payment provider charges a fixed amount or a percentage of the value processed. Some platforms also charge for faster payouts.
Subscriptions: Customers pay regularly for access to software or additional account features. Revolut, for example, reported $936 million in subscription revenue for 2025.
Interest income: A licensed lender can earn interest on loans. Profitability depends partly on funding costs and the losses arising when borrowers fail to repay.
Commissions: A platform receives a fee for arranging a financial product or directing a customer to a provider, subject to the applicable rules and commercial agreement.
To understand the product's economics, look at how much revenue remains after the cost of providing the service. As transaction volume grows, check whether your costs are rising just as quickly.
Are FinTech banks safe?
Yes, a licensed FinTech bank is subject to banking supervision, and eligible deposits receive the same statutory protection as deposits at other licensed banks in its jurisdiction. The protection depends on where the bank is licensed:
In the US, the FDIC insures eligible deposits up to $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, within the applicable account category.
In the UK, the FSCS protects eligible deposits up to £120,000 per person, per authorised firm. This limit has applied since December 2025.
In the EU, national deposit guarantee schemes protect eligible deposits up to €100,000 per depositor, per bank, or the equivalent in local currency.
An app can also offer financial services without being a bank. For example, a UK electronic money institution must safeguard relevant customer funds, but the balance in its app does not have FSCS deposit protection. In the US, money held at a partner bank through an app may qualify for FDIC insurance if the conditions for pass-through coverage are met. Deposit protection applies if the bank holding your money fails, but it does not cover the failure of the app company.
You can find the legal entity providing your account in its terms and check its status with the relevant regulator. That tells you which protection applies to your balance. It is also worth checking how the provider handles unauthorised access and service outages: deposit guarantees do not prevent either problem.
Who regulates FinTech companies?
Authorities overseeing FinTech companies include the FCA, the ECB, and the SEC, among others. Which authority has jurisdiction depends on where the company operates and what financial service it provides:
In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) authorises or registers payment and electronic money institutions. A licensed bank is also supervised by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), which examines its financial safety. The FCA oversees how the bank treats customers.
In the US, the regulator depends on the company's licence and activity. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) supervises national banks, while state authorities oversee firms licensed under their rules. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) enforces federal consumer financial law and supervises certain nonbank providers. If the product involves securities brokerage, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has a role.
In the EU, national regulators oversee payment companies authorised in their countries. Banks in states participating in European banking supervision follow a different arrangement: the ECB directly oversees the largest banks, while national authorities handle smaller ones under the ECB's oversight.
If your product combines services, more than one regulator may be involved. For example, an app might let customers view an account held by a partner bank. Identify the legal entity behind that account to determine which authority oversees it and what rules apply to the money.
In the EU, financial firms covered by DORA must also manage technology risks and prepare for operational disruptions. These requirements have applied since January 2025.
Read also: How PSD3 will change the FinTech industry
Will fintech be replaced by AI?
No. AI is already part of FinTech. In September 2026, the ECB reported that more than 90% of banks under its direct supervision used AI in their operations. That is evidence of adoption, though it does not tell us how every FinTech company will use it.
AI can flag an unusual payment early enough for the provider to review it before it goes through. Lenders use models to help assess credit applications. Generative AI can also give an underwriter a first summary of the documents they need to examine.
Using AI in these situations creates work for the company building the service. A fraud alert requires a way to be reviewed when a genuine customer is blocked, and an underwriter needs to check the material behind a summary before relying on it.
The Financial Stability Board also warns that relying on a small number of external AI providers can create shared risks. For example, an outage affecting a widely used fraud detection service could interrupt payment checks at several banks at once.
For your product, decide how far a model's role should extend before you put it to work. AI may help staff reach a decision faster, but the financial institution remains responsible for the outcome. The ECB makes this point about lending: a model can improve predictions, while decisions about how much risk to accept still require human judgement.
Build your next FinTech capability with VirtusLab
Financial innovation becomes useful when it improves a service your customers or colleagues depend on. Delivering it requires software that can evolve with your business.
At VirtusLab, we help financial institutions modernize complex platforms and connect them to the wider financial ecosystem. Our engineers work alongside internal teams on demanding systems, including infrastructure for Canton Network.
Talk to our team about the engineering behind your next financial product.
Build your next FinTech capability with VirtusLab
At VirtusLab, we help financial institutions modernize complex platforms and connect them to the wider financial ecosystem. Our engineers work alongside internal teams on demanding systems, including infrastructure for Canton Network.