Global Fintech Trends 2025

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Hey! Welcome back to Edu’s Newsletter - Linkedin DeepDive

This week’s edition is packed (full edition on Substack coming out tomorrow):

• A tactical breakdown of the Global Fintech Report 2025 by BCG + QED 💸 (what you are reading today)

• Reflections from the trenches

• A tactical deep dive into launching zero-to-one products — with lessons from Figma, Upwork, Jira, and personal war stories from Latin America 🛠

If you’re building something new — or investing in those who are — you won’t want to miss this one.

👉 Subscribe (link in comments) to get next week’s edition straight to your inbox. I write about product strategy, leadership lessons, and fintech trends across LatAm and the globe.

Let’s dive in for the LinkedIn's DeepDive

🌍 Global Fintech: What Comes After the Hype

The fintech hype cycle is over. But the opportunity? Bigger than ever.

BCG and QED just dropped their 2025 Global Fintech Report. it’s a banger. I’ve pulled together the sharpest insights so you don’t have to wade through 50 pages.

Here’s the playbook for what’s working, what’s next, and where the smart money (and teams) are heading:

📥 Download the full report here 📊 Co-authored by BCG + QED, based on interviews with 60+ fintech execs and investors

1. Entering a New Chapter: Profitability Beats Scale

• Revenue growth rebounded to 21% in 2024 (vs. 13% in 2023).

• The market is shifting from “growth at all costs” to “sustainable, profitable growth.”

• EBITDA margins improved 25%, with 69% of public fintechs now profitable.

• Only 3% of global banking & insurance revenues have been penetrated—massive upside remains

2. Fintech Is Only 3% In — And Growing 3x Faster Than Banks

Yes, fintech has barely scratched the surface:

• Just 3% of global banking and insurance revenue is penetrated.

• But it's growing 3x faster than incumbents.

• ~100 scaled fintechs (those with $500M+ in annual revenue) make up 60% of all industry revenue.

Success is concentrated in:

• Digital wallets

• Acquiring & vertical SaaS

• Challenger banks (e.g., Nubank, Monzo)

• Retail crypto trading

• BNPL/POS lending

• Payments dominate with $126B of the $231B in scaled fintech revenues.

• Verticals like insurance, wealth management, and secured lending are still <1% penetrated.

It's still Day 1.

3. The winners so far are where banks were:

• Too slow (→ vertical SaaS + modern acquirers)

• Too exclusionary (→ challenger banks + BNPL)

• Too constrained (→ wallets + crypto)

4. Geographic Penetration Gaps: US & China Dominate in Revenue Share

• US & China = 68% of scaled revenues

• Latin America (~10%): shows strength via Nubank, Mercado Pago, and others.

• MEA & Europe still have significant underpenetrated segments.

US: 52% (~$120 billion) of scaled revenues, due to its large addressable market and easy access to capital. Digital wallet players and acquirers have benefited from a highly consumer-driven market (particularly in e-commerce) and a card-first economy in which both consumers and merchants prioritize seamless acceptance

China: 16% (~$38 billion) of scaled fintech revenues, with success also driven by a large addressable market in addition to the rise of “super apps” like WeChat and AliPay

Europe: 8% (~$19 billion) of scaled fintech revenues. The region’s heterogeneity and regulatory regimes have made scaling difficult. Nonetheless, challenger banks (for e.g.Revolut, Starling, and Monzo), remittances (e.g., Wise), and BNPL/POS (for e.g., Klarna, SumUp) have led the charge in Europe by catering to younger consumers seeking superior digital experiences and low foreign exchange fees for traveling. As I got back from my vacations in Europe, it was incredible to see small merchants everywhere using SumUp, Revolut and Monzo card-holders, Contactless payments at every toll and public transportation, even ATMs. Still room for growth IMO.

APAC (excluding China): 10% (~$22 billion), driven by super apps in their home markets (e.g. Grab, Toss, PayTM, PhonePe, and GCash, ZaloPay, Timo) success. The heterogeneity of Asia-Pacific, similarly to Europe, makes scaling across borders difficult. Large markets like India growing rapidly in terms of population, economic growth, and tech adoption, can bring exponential growth over the next years.

LaTAm💜: 10% (~$22 billion), with Nubank, Mercado Libre, and others succeeding by targeting large un- and underbanked populations, leveraging growth in the retail sector, and government-driven financial inclusion policies and innovation (Real Time Payments (PIX in Brazil, Bre-b in Colombia), Open Finance, Fintech Laws, etc.)

Middle East and Africa: < 1% (~$3 billion). Fintechs serving the needs of un- and underbanked consumers through mobile are seeing rapid growth in penetration, with Telcos having formed some of the most successful fintech platforms (e.g. M-Pesa). I've been syncing with peers in Dubai and the Middle East, and you should expect big innovation and higher penetration of fintech and tech platforms over the next 24 months (attracting great talent, investing significantly, regulators making the right moves)

5. Future Fintech Trends

1️⃣Agentic AI Will Eat Fintech’s Stack (Eventually)

Everyone’s playing with GenAI. But the next wave, agentic AI, will be far more disruptive.

• Think self-operating agents that research, reason, and execute.

• Most fintechs are in pilot phase. Early-stage ones are using it for coding + speed.

• Long-term: massive potential in commerce, personal finance, and SaaS automation.

Early advantage: Younger players building AI-native infra from day one.

2️⃣ Onchain Finance = Real, but Misunderstood

Crypto may have cooled, but onchain infrastructure is heating up:

• Asset tokenization is the next big play (real estate, private funds, bonds).

• Cross-border stablecoins are the obvious entry — but infra + standards still lag.

• Big banks are already piloting scalable use cases. But still early.

• Transitioning from pilot projects to large-scale deployments in on-chain depends on: enhanced regulatory clarity, unified standards, bank-grade infrastructure, and a critical mass of early adopters for network effects to take root.

💡 Think of it as the fintech version of cloud circa 2010. Not mass-market yet, but inevitable.

3️⃣ Fintech Strategy: Product and Customer Segment Expansion Have Higher Odds of Success Than Going Global

Winning strategy before: go global, acquire as many customers as possible, high CAC, cashback, go for everybody, 1mn users = 1bn valuation.

Winning strategy now: deepen relationships and diversify revenue streams

• Diversify beyond fee income

• Grow average deposit balances

• Affluent user segments

• Product expansion (loans, investments, insurance - hit me up for insurance 🔥)

• Expand into new geographic markets (be picky)

🛑 Going global: high risk, low return (unless you're Mercado Pago or Nu). Instead, pick a few core markets where you can get a competitive edge and where traditional banks are lacking.

4️⃣ Lending: The $280B White Space No One Talks About

• Fintechs have originated $500B in loans — sounds big?

• Compare that to $18T in US household debt alone. It’s a rounding error.

• Outside of personal unsecured consumer lending, fintech penetration remains less than 1% in other domains such as secured loans and business loans.

🔥 What’s changing:

• Better underwriting + data

• Risk scoring third-party providers accelerate time to market: no need to build your own credit scoring team from zero to one

• Private credit funds entering strong (with $1.7T in AUM)

• Players with massive customer bases and better ML models have a huge competitive advantage

Est. $280B white space for fintech-originated loans backed by private credit over the next few years: partnering with fintechs, which now originate billions of dollars in loans every year, represents one such attractive opportunity for private credit funds

But be warned: this model hasn’t been tested through a full credit cycle yet.

5️⃣ Where the Next Scaled Winners Will Come From

Forget launching another wallet or BNPL clone. The future lies in:

✅ B2B(2X): Embedding fintech inside SaaS to solve real pain points (payments, accounting, treasury)

✅ Financial Infrastructure: Long sales cycles, yes — but massive upside modernizing old rails

✅ Lending: Especially SMB and secured lending where banks are slow, manual, or blind

Final Thought: The Next Fintech Boom Will Look Nothing Like the Last One

If the first wave was “consumer-first,” the next one will be:

• Infra-first

• AI-native

• Painkiller > Vitamin

And you won’t need 100 million users to be a unicorn. Just one killer wedge in a $13T industry.

📩 Want more insights like this?

I break down global trends, LatAm fintech plays, and product strategy tips every week in Edu’s Newsletter on Substack, and short-deep dives on Linkedin.

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💧 Let’s stay ahead of the curve.