Fintechs accounted for 4% of total global financial services revenues last year, with 74% of the biggest firms now profitable.
According to the Global fintech report 2026 from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and FT Partners, fintech is big enough to be considered a “distinct and mature sector”, but one with huge space to grow.
Revenue generated by global fintech hit $504bn (£374bn) in the past 12 months, a 22% increase on the previous year, while 74% of the largest firms reported being profitable.
Deepak Goyal, managing director and senior partner at BCG, and coauthor of the report, said 4% of global financial services revenue is “a remarkable milestone for a sector that barely existed two decades ago”.
He also said it “signals how much of the opportunity still lies ahead”.
“The fintechs that will capture that white space are the ones building with discipline on regulation, on profitability, and on the trust that comes from consistency,” he added.
In the report, BCG revealed that fintech IPOs rose 50% in the year, with 42 deals, while mergers and acquisition volumes accelerated from $105bn in 2023 to $184bn in 2024 to $251bn last year.
More mature
On the overriding figures, Inderpreet Batra, global leader of payments and fintech business at BCG, said: “Fintech has not simply bounced back from the reset years, it has come out the other side as a fundamentally more mature industry.
Batra added: “The firms leading today are profitable, disciplined and expanding into new products and geographies with a seriousness that was not always present in the boom years. The question now is how far they will go in reshaping financial services.”
The report noted that neobanks are expanding their offerings, which it described as a “defining dynamic of the next chapter”.
“Leading players are no longer focused narrowly on payments or low-friction onboarding,” BCG said. “They are diversifying into lending, investing, insurance, cross-border transfers and mass-affluent wealth management, evolving from single-product disruptors into broader financial platforms that present a sharpening competitive threat to incumbents.”
From a tech point of view, it found that artificial intelligence (AI) is also reshaping the sector. BCG’s data shows fintechs that are using AI effectively are achieving up to five times greater developer productivity. The report said the strongest near-term gains are in engineering, underwriting, compliance and customer support.
It said these are areas where workflow redesign, rather than tool adoption alone, is driving the difference.
Steve McLaughlin, CEO at FT Partners, said there is a divide emerging between fintech companies that “have made AI foundational – embedded across finance, accounting, customer service, fraud and every other function – and those still using it for coding help and a handful of disconnected workflows”.
“Large, established companies are pouring capital into AI, but capital alone hasn’t produced breakout capability,” he said. “The difference comes down to management, engineering talent and the drive to actually rewire the organisation. That’s what will separate the winners from everyone else over the next few years.”
