The Global Snapshot

In 2025, global FinTech investment showed a return to growth, with most markets seeing a pick-up in FinTech investment, reflecting a stabilizing funding environment following some years of decline and investor re-set. FinTech companies worldwide raised a total of $53 billion across 5,918 deals, indicating continued investor interest despite a selective capital deployment approach.

The United States remained the dominant global FinTech market, accounting for $25.1 billion of investment across 2,449 deals, surpassing all other countries in both deal volume and capital raised. The UK retained its ranking of second place globally with $3.6bn of investment, closely followed by India in third place with $3.4bn. The UAE secured fourth place globally with $2.5bn, entering the top 10 global markets for the second time due to the $2bn raised by Binance in H1 2025, which was by some distance the largest primary issuance deal globally in FinTech in 2025.

Singapore claimed 5th position with $2bn, followed by an Americas solid mid-tier cluster of Brazil, Canada and Mexico, each raising between $1.3 and $1.6 billion. France and Germany rounded out the top ten, underscoring Europe’s continued relevance.

It is well documented that the global VC market generally and the FinTech market specifically have been experiencing a re-set in investment over the last 4 years. However, on a global basis, FinTech investment accelerated in the second half of 2025, with total funding rising to $32.5bn compared to $20.2bn in the first half, representing a 61% increase. This improvement contributed to a full year total that exceeded 2024 levels by 21%, signalling the start of a potential recovery in investment.

Following some years of declining investment, the global total is almost back to 2023 levels. Overall, the data points to a FinTech investment market that is regaining confidence.

Top 10 Global Markets: Where FinTech Is Attracting Investment

In 2025, global FinTech investment totaled $52.7 billion across 5,918 deals, reflecting a pick-up in activity and continued investor confidence in the sector. The United States retained its position as the largest FinTech hub, raising $25.1 billion across 2,449 deals. This dominance highlights the country’s strong pipeline of late-stage startups:15 of the top 20 deals globally were for US FinTechs. The top 20 deals globally also saw capital raised across a wide range of sectors, with Payments claiming 5 of the top 20 deals, Crypto/blockchain claiming 4, and SME banking claiming 3.

The UK retained its second place globally following a tight battle with India. The UK received $3.6bn of investment, with India close behind on $3.4bn The UK however saw the funding allocated across 534 deals, more than twice India’s 253 deals, reflecting a broader funding environment in the UK.

The UAE’s FinTech scene made a striking mark in 2025, primarily driven by Binance’s single $2 billion funding round. This deal accounted for the majority of the UAE’s total $2.5 billion dollars raised across 113 deals.

Singapore continues to be a strong global competitor at fifth place with $2bn raised. Also in the Top 10, Brazil, Canada and Mexico all have thriving FinTech sectors forming a solid mid-tier cluster, raising between 1.3 and 1.6 billion dollars each. These markets showcase steady FinTech adoption across the Americas, with notable activity in payments, digital banking, and investment platforms.

France and Germany rounded out the top ten markets, with funding between 1.0 and 1.1 billion dollars.

Overall, the top ten global FinTech markets in 2025 demonstrate both the concentration of capital in leading hubs and the broad geographic spread of innovation, signalling a robust, diversified, and increasingly global FinTech investment landscape.

Looking back over the past decade that Innovate Finance has been reporting on FinTech investment, 18 countries have featured in the Top 10 rankings, of which, only four countries have been included in the Top 10 every year for the past 10 years: the United States, the United Kingdom, India and Germany. Ten years’ ago, the Top 10 countries accounted for c.95% of all FinTech investment, indicating a high concentration in a relatively small number of markets. This has reduced over time but still stands at 82% in 2025.

Power Plays: Global Mega Deals in 2025

In 2025, the FinTech sector continued to attract significant investment, with several major funding rounds highlighting strong investor confidence. Payments and cryptocurrency platforms were particularly prominent globally in 2025. 

The top five global deals were:

Mark Beeston, Founder & Managing Partner at Illuminate Financial, provides insights into the market in 2025:

“Global FinTech showed mixed signals in 2025, the data shows capital holding steady while overall deal count fell, confirming a structural shift toward fewer, higher-value investments rather than a cyclical recovery. That said we saw significant M&A driven exit activity across our portfolios throughout the year.

The market now rewards sustainable profit potential over pure headline growth at any cost. Disciplined B2B solutions will continue to thrive whilst B2C fintechs built for expansion rather than efficiency will remain misaligned with what both investors and acquirers are willing to fund today.”

Tim Levene, CEO of Augmentum Fintech, concurs, and highlights where funding did, and did not, get deployed in 2025:

“The 2025 funding landscape presented a sharp dichotomy. We witnessed a distinct ‘flight to quality,’ where category-defining leaders raised capital efficiently, occasionally commanding valuations reminiscent of 2021. However, this was not a rising tide; many startups struggled to attract investment, and the exit market remained subdued. The data underscores this shift: global funding volumes actually increased while deal counts declined, indicating that capital is increasingly concentrating into fewer, higher-conviction opportunities."

Trends in the US Fintech Investment Landscape

FinTech investment in the US in 2025 was 13% up on 2024, and H2 2025 was 63% up on H1 2025. The US accounted for 14 of the top 20 deals and those large deals saw capital raised across several sectors, in particular crypto, payments, and SME banking. The US is back to its investment levels of 2023 and directionally is showing renewed appetite for FinTech.

The European FinTech Investment Landscape

In 2025, Europe raised a total of $8.8bn of FinTech investment across 1,391 deals, highlighting the region’s dynamic and diverse investment landscape. Of this total, the United Kingdom accounted for $3.6bn, while the Rest of Europe (RoE) contributed $5.2bn.

The United Kingdom was the leading European market once again, securing $3.6bn across 542 deals, with France and Germany following, raising $1.08bn and $997 million respectively, with both countries attracting significant funding across digital banking, payment solutions, and financial infrastructure platforms.

Switzerland, the Netherlands and Ireland each raised approximately $500m showing notable activity in areas such as wealth management and payment processing. Spain, Denmark, Lithuania and Italy completed the top ten European markets, raising between $100 and $300m each, with growing investment in digital payments, lending, and cross-border financial services.

The European market is slightly more concentrated than the global market, with the Top 10 countries accounting for c.84% of total capital raised in 2025. Overall the UK raised more investment than the next 5 European countries combined. Looking at half-year trends, FinTech investment in Europe was broadly flat from H1 to H2 2025 with an increase of just 3% (7% was the increase from H1 to H2 in 2024).

Year-on-year Europe was 7% up on 2024 investment levels. In comparison, the US was up 13% year-on-year and the rest-of-the-world was up an impressive 46% year-on-year. FinTech Collective has recently launched a pan-European FinTech fund; here’s how Partner and Co-founder Gareth Jones views the European opportunity:

“As a U.S.-based investor, I am particularly excited about 2026 as the year UK and European FinTech sovereignty becomes the most compelling investable opportunity. Agentic AI and stablecoins are coming of age simultaneously, creating a two-front disruption across all facets of financial services, while enabling a defensive re-industrialisation of the European technology stack and a meaningful reduction in reliance on foreign, primarily U.S., code.

As the U.S. navigates a pivotal Federal Reserve transition and a choppy path for the dollar, the winners will be UK and European platforms that stop building on borrowed rails and instead own the underlying systems of trust, liquidity, and intelligence.”

Inside the UK FinTech Ecosystem

In 2025 , UK FinTech companies raised $3.6bn across 534 deals , relatively flat on 2024 investment levels (a 0.4% increase). While other global regions have recovered in 2025 to their investment levels of 2023, the UK was still 37% below 2023 funding volumes. However, funding increased in the UK in the second half of 2025, with $1.9 billion raised , up 11% on H1, the first such increase for 2 years. While the flat performance in 2025 suggests the UK is lagging the global uptick in FinTech investment, the H2 result in the UK hints that we may have started to see the upturn.

Top 5 UK deals in 2025:

The Top UK 5 deals show a return to strong capital raising in Payments. In fact, of the Top 20 deals, which accounted for 59% of all capital raised in the UK, 9 capital raises were for Payments companies. The next largest segment was Wealth Management infrastructure, with a total of 3 deals. It is also notable that most of the Top 20 capital raises were for B2B platforms providing infrastructure and services to other financial services companies, with very few D2C (Direct to Consumer) platforms raising substantial capital last year. However, it is important to mention that Revolut executed a $3bn secondary transaction in 2025, larger than any primary dea last yearl, of which more details are included below in the section on Secondary Market Transactions.

Innovate Finance also congratulates the following members who raised capital in 2025: Airwallex, Bumper, Curve, FNZ, Hyperlayer, Quantexa, Revolut, Ripple, Thunes, Tide, and Yaspa

Commenting on UK markets in 2025, James Codling, Managing Partner, Volution said

“From Volution’s perspective, 2025 has been a good year for UK FinTech, particularly at the early growth stage, with companies such as Wrisk, Elliptic and Zopa in our portfolio demonstrating disciplined execution and growing commercial traction. Investment momentum has been encouraging, reflecting renewed confidence in high-quality businesses. However, ​structural challenges remain. The Series A/B stage continues to be underfunded relative to Seed and later-stage growth capital. Bridging this gap with more patient, scale-focused investment will be critical to enable more UK FinTech companies to scale sustainably and compete globally.”

Volution’s observations rightly highlight the scale-up funding gap in UK VC funding. This is a persistent problem. Innovate Finance is working with HM Treasury, the City of London Corporation and the British Business Bank on initiatives to help close this investment gap, and readers should expect to see more on this during 2026.

We are also seeing with the rise of AI, the blurring of boundaries between sectors.

Commenting on this, Kevin Chong, Co-Founder and General Partner Outward VC, said:

“Fintech is entering a new phase: advances in AI are quickly lowering the cost and time to build products. In this phase, fintech investment opportunities do not sit squarely inside traditional fintech verticals such as lending, payments, and wealth. We see compelling investment opportunities in adjacent sectors that will reshape financial services. These include legal services, data and analytics, and finance operations where startups are building verticalised AI to deliver step-changes in productivity and market expansion.”

Fundraising by female founders

The volume of capital raised by female-led UK FinTechs in 2025 was a disappointing $76m across 57 deals, 37% lower than the $120m raised in 2024. This represents 2.1% of total funding, consistent with the UK average across venture capital fund raising (British Business Bank data). Raising capital for female-led businesses continues to be a challenge that it is critical for industry, government and regulators to address if we are to ensure the UK FinTech industry continues to thrive. The high watermark was $1.1 billion in 2022, however as overall investment volumes have fallen, investment into female-led businesses has fallen faster. Innovate Finance welcomes initiatives including the Invest in Women Taskforce and the capital allocated by the British Business Bank to such initiatives. In 2026 Innovate Finance will also be publishing our 10th annual year of Women in FinTech Powerlist, celebrating the achievements of female leaders at all levels of seniority who are transforming financial services for the better.

Innovate Finance welcomes initiatives including the Invest in Women Taskforce and the capital allocated by the British Business Bank to such initiatives. In 2026 Innovate Finance will also be publishing its 10th Women in FinTech Powerlist, celebrating the achievements of female leaders at all levels of seniority who are transforming financial services for the better.

Secondary Market Transactions for UK FinTechs

2025 saw continued interest in secondary market transactions, as FinTechs remain private for longer. Most notable was Revolut’s $3bn of secondary deals, bringing in high quality new investors to the UK’s largest FinTech, with a reported valuation of $75bn. This is a strong testament to the ability of UK FinTechs to attract institutional investors in large size deals.

2025 also saw the launch of PISCES (Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System) trading venues, an initiative led by the UK Government and the London Stock Exchange to bridge the gap between private and public capital markets. It allows for secondary sales of shares (not new capital raises) with lighter disclosure than public markets, providing an orderly exit route for early investors and employees without the continuous trading of a full public listing. Innovate Finance has provided input to the development of the PISCES rules and we look forward to reporting on the initial transactions on these venues in our 2026 investment reports.

Commenting on the increasing demand for secondary liquidity, Kristaps Ronis (Partner) and Fabio Furlani (Analyst) at Ion Pacific said:

“Due to the lack of exits and distributions, fund managers continue to face significant challenges in raising capital. As a result, the number of active venture capital investors in Europe has declined materially, with industry data indicating a contraction of over 60% from the 2020–21 peak. Our outlook for 2026 builds on trends that began to take shape in 2025, with more sophisticated fund managers increasingly turning to secondary-led solutions—such as continuation vehicles, fund recapitalizations, and strip sales—to generate liquidity and drive DPI. We expect the investor base to continue to contract, as capital concentrates around established managers with proven track records and access to alternative liquidity structures.”

The IPO Market

Data from the London Stock Exchange (LSE) shows that equity markets are continuing to improve. For 2025 a total of $25bn was raised on the LSE, of which $2.8bn was for IPOs, almost 3x 2024’s total, and it was the best year for IPOs since 2021. The financial services sector saw the IPO of Shawbrook Group, issuing $470m of primary and secondary equity. The share price was up 31% at year end, and the company’s stock market capitalisation was $3.4bn. The LSE continues to be the leading European stock exchange for raising equity.

At the smaller companies end of the market, $3.6bn was raised on AIM including 14 IPOs, including the largest placing on AIM of $1.6bn by Rosebank Industries.

Commenting on a strong 2025 performance for listed UK FinTech companies, Gautam Pillai, Head of FinTech Equity Research at Peel Hunt, said:

“2025 was a pivotal year for UK fintech. Listed players delivered resilient growth and capital discipline despite macro headwinds, with PensionBee scaling assets past £7bn and Funding Circle reaffirming profitability targets. Private UK FinTechs drove innovation in embedded finance, pay‑by‑bank, and fraud‑prevention, attracting strategic investment despite softer venture flows. Strategic buyers and take‑privates underscored the UK valuation gap, while regulatory shifts like open banking expansion, APP fraud reimbursement, and listing reforms reshaped the landscape. Looking ahead to 2026, expect consolidation, deeper adoption of account‑to‑account payments, and AI‑driven risk controls as UK fintech continues to blend scale with agility”.

What Lies Ahead for FinTech Investment?

The 2025 investment data suggests the global FinTech market is on the cusp of improvement after some years of a cyclical investment re-set by investors. There is of course also the interesting backdrop of the AI sector to take into consideration, which is drawing unprecedented volumes of investment from the market and often overlaps with FinTech.

Here’s what some of our members are predicting for 2026:

Udayan Goyal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Apis said:

“In 2026, we expect investment to accelerate in several FinTech verticals. Embedded finance will increasingly target SMEs rather than consumers, with more capital flowing to FinTechs partnering with non-financial platforms to serve business needs. AI-native underwriting and operations infrastructure will continue to attract investment as incumbents and challengers embed AI into core financial workflows. We also anticipate growing investment in stablecoin payments infrastructure, particularly B2B payment rails, custody, compliance and treasury tooling that lower costs and accelerate cross-border transactions.”

Tim Levene, CEO of Augmentum Fintech, sees stablecoin and AI as the key themes for 2026:

“In 2026, we expect two themes to gain significant traction. First is the maturation of stablecoins. While 2025 signalled the start of mainstream adoption, 2026 will see rigorous institutional use cases alongside consumer products built on seamless stablecoin rails that finally abstract away the underlying crypto complexity.

Second is the operational revolution driven by AI. We are seeing AI-native teams deliver product updates with unprecedented efficiency, fundamentally redefining the speed of innovation. Consequently, the heuristics investors use to assess long-term value must urgently adapt to this new, high-velocity paradigm.”

James Codling, Managing Partner at Volution, said:
“In the coming year we expect FinTech investment to remain selective, with capital concentrating in verticals where technology is demonstrably embedded rather than superficially applied. While many FinTechs now position themselves as “AI-led”, the businesses most likely to scale are those where automation and data deliver measurable improvements in efficiency, risk management or unit economics, rather than serving as a broad positioning claim.Beyond this, we anticipate increased activity in InsurTech, digital assets and financial infrastructure. In InsurTech, transactions point to renewed confidence in scalable underwriting and distribution models. In digital assets, capital is concentrating around stablecoins, payments and blockchain infrastructure supporting regulated use cases. Banking-as-a-Service also remains active, with deals focused on platforms enabling compliant, scalable financial products across multiple markets.”

Kaan Akin, Managing Partners at Tenity, said:

"In 2026, we expect increasing investment into FinTech verticals where blockchain and AI materially improve trust, efficiency and compliance — particularly in payments and settlement, on-chain identity and compliance, tokenised real-world assets, and programmable financial infrastructure. At Tenity, we see Web3 not as a parallel ecosystem to FinTech, but as an enabling layer that will allow financial services to operate faster, more transparently and at lower cost — especially in regulated, institutional-grade use cases”.

Kristaps Ronis (Partner) and Fabio Furlani (Analyst) at Ion Pacific:

“Looking ahead to 2026, fintech investment is expected to remain highly selective and increasingly strategic, with investors prioritising monetisable use cases and data-driven innovation over broad-based expansion. Digital assets and AI-enabled fintechs have attracted significant global capital in H1’25—$8.4bn and $7.2bn, respectively—almost matching the total investment recorded globally in all of 2024. In particular, platforms leveraging generative and agentic AI to enhance prediction markets and forecasting capabilities are expected to remain key beneficiaries of investment activity, attracting disproportionate capital and commanding premium valuations through 2026”

Mark Beeston, Founder & Managing Partner at Illuminate Financial.

“Looking ahead to 2026, we expect continued differentiation with capital continuing to concentrate in the most sought after deals. The US will continue to dominate funding, while Europe, led by the UK, remains more selective, with no sign of a return to the peak funding years. Valuations will stay disciplined but with significant differentiation for the most sought after deals , while exits will continue to be driven more by M&A than IPOs.“

To conclude, Janine Hirt, CEO at Innovate Finance, comments on the 2025 performance and on what is required to continue growth into 2026:

“Our latest investment figures show the resilience, strength, and global competitiveness of our phenomenal UK FinTech ecosystem. Attracting a strong $3.6 billion in investment in 2025 - and again claiming second place globally behind only the United States - the UK has once again proven its credentials as a world-leading financial innovation and technology hub. Other countries are quickly gaining pace however, and so to maintain our global lead it is imperative that we push ahead on delivering key regulatory reforms with speed, increase access to growth capital, and continue to foster an environment which is attractive for both domestic and international entrepreneurs and investors.

Our thriving UK FinTech sector is driving growth and productivity across the country, supporting consumers with the cost of living, facilitating greater financial inclusion, and creating thousands of jobs each year. We at Innovate Finance look forward to continuing to work with industry, regulators, and government to cement the UK as the best place in the world to start, build and scale a FinTech business.”

Methodology

Innovate Finance sources data for this report from Pitchbook, supplemented by data from Beauhurst and Innovate Finance’s own data analysis. The report focuses on VC equity investment into FinTech and we remove debt capital raises from the analysis.

2025 saw a number of large capital raises by tech platforms in the emerging Prediction Markets sector. Innovate Finance does not designate this sector as FinTech and as such these capital raises are not include