Coauthored by TX Zhuo and Julia Puzzo
Fintech in 2026 looks nothing like fintech in 2021.
Capital is more expensive, regulators are more assertive, buyers are more sophisticated, and the gap between “interesting product” and “venture-scale business” has widened meaningfully.
At Fika, our fintech strategy for 2026 is grounded in a simple belief: the next generation of durable fintech companies will be built where money, regulation, and operational risk collide, not where UX novelty lives.
Here are the core fintech areas we’re focusing on in 2026.
1. Office of the CFO: High-Stakes Financial Operations, Not Commodity Tools
The Office of the CFO has quietly become one of the most attractive buyers of fintech software, but only in very specific slices of the stack.
Why this area matters now
Over the past five years, CFOs have absorbed responsibilities that didn’t historically sit with finance teams, like cross-border money movement, vendor risk and third-party exposure, regulatory reporting across jurisdictions, and real-time cash visibility as settlement speeds compress.
At the same time, ERP systems were not designed for real-time money, API-driven payments, or modern risk management. CFOs are increasingly forced to layer new tooling on top of legacy infrastructure, and that’s where opportunity exists.
What we like
We are focused on automated software that improves high-stakes financial activities, including:
- Audit risk and controls: systems that reduce material weakness exposure and survive regulator or auditor scrutiny
- Cross-border transaction tracing: tooling that makes money movement explainable across rails, currencies, and counterparties
- Vendor and counterparty risk: continuous assessment of exposure, not annual check-the-box reviews
Critically, we like software that consolidates existing solutions rather than adding another point product. CFOs are buried in dashboards, and the vendors that win are the ones that meaningfully simplify how work gets done.
This is also a category where AI has real leverage — not as “insight,” but as automation that replaces manual controls and reconciliations.
Ultimately, the test is straightforward: does the product materially reduce financial, audit, or regulatory risk, and is the value clear enough to defend at the board level?
2. Real-Time Compliance and Regulation
Compliance is no longer a back-office function. In 2026, it’s real-time infrastructure.
Why this area matters now
Three structural shifts are reshaping compliance spend:
- Instant payments are mainstream (FedNow, RTP, faster cross-border rails). Money now moves faster than legacy controls were designed to handle.
- Regulatory scrutiny has intensified, particularly around BaaS, AML, sanctions, and consumer protection. Post-mortem compliance is no longer acceptable.
- Non-fintech companies are launching fintech products — without having compliance DNA in-house.
The result: compliance cost is exploding, and existing tooling is fundamentally mismatched to modern rails.
What we like
We are focused on real-time AML, compliance, and traceability, particularly for:
- Instant payments
- Cross-border money movement
- Stablecoin or digital-asset-adjacent flows (where regulatory clarity is increasing, not decreasing)
We’re especially interested in infrastructure that enables non-fintech companies (marketplaces, platforms, payroll providers, vertical SaaS) to launch embedded financial products safely.
These buyers are motivated, well-capitalized, and under-served by legacy regtech vendors.
A key requirement: the product must clearly map to a specific regulation, statute, or supervisory requirement.
Compliance purchases are not aspirational, they are reactive to concrete rules and exam findings. In compliance, precision equals pricing power. Vague “risk reduction” does not.
3. Insurance Infrastructure and Intelligence
Insurance is often lumped into fintech, but in practice, most venture-scale opportunity sits behind the scenes, not at the point of sale.
Why this area matters now
Insurance carriers are facing new categories of risk that traditional models were not built for, such as climate-driven losses, complex cyber risk, specialty commercial exposures, and parametric and event-based claims.
At the same time, claims costs and loss ratios are under pressure, making operational efficiency and decision accuracy more important than growth-at-all-costs distribution.
What we like
We are focused on infrastructure and intelligence for insurers, particularly:
- Platforms that support complex or specialty risks, where underwriting and claims require new data sources
- Claims automation and decisioning, especially where speed, consistency, and defensibility matter
We like infrastructure and intelligence that live inside the insurance workflow, where decisions are made and costs are incurred. That’s where switching costs are highest, and where value compounds over time.
In our view, anything that doesn’t materially improve loss ratios, claims costs, or decision quality remains incremental.
4. The Intersection of Healthcare and Fintech
Healthcare is one of the largest, most complex financial systems in the world, but most “healthcare fintech” misses where the real leverage is.
Why this area matters now
Healthcare money flows are uniquely broken: settlement cycles are long and opaque, multiple parties touch each dollar (payer, provider, patient, employer), and administrative overhead remains enormous.
At the same time, providers are under margin pressure and care delivery is becoming more distributed.
What we like
Our focus here is narrow and intentional. We look for companies with:
- A clear fintech angle, not generic healthtech
- Meaningful improvements to the payments stack for healthcare players, such as faster cash, higher quality revenue, better reconciliation, and fewer write-offs
This includes infrastructure that improves how money moves after care is delivered, without attempting to re-architect the entire system — that’s where healthcare fintech can scale with discipline and durability.
How It All Fits Together
Across all of these focus areas, a few common principles guide our thinking. We focus on:
- Buyers with urgency and budgets, not users with enthusiasm
- Infrastructure over interfaces, outcomes over tools
- Areas where regulation creates inevitability, not friction
Fintech in 2026 is less about disruption and more about building the systems that allow money to move faster, safer, and under tighter scrutiny. That’s where we believe the next generation of durable, venture-scale fintech companies will be built, and where Fika will be spending its time.
Fika’s Fintech Focus Areas for 2026 was originally published in Fika Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.