FinTech Funding: A Quarter-by-Quarter Analysis

All funding deals in the FinTech Market over the last years

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the FinTech Market.

Is FinTech funding actually slowing down?

FinTech funding is clearly slowing in deal activity, with the number of financings falling for two consecutive quarters after peaking in Q1 2026.

We tracked 639 financings worth approximately $32.95 billion between Q3 2025 and Q3 2026. Deal volume increased from 118 in Q3 2025 to 151 in Q4, then reached 174 in Q1 2026. Since then, the market has contracted sharply, with 124 deals in Q2 and only 72 in Q3.

The latest quarter recorded 58.6% fewer deals than the Q1 peak. Meanwhile, capital has followed a much less predictable path, moving from $5.04 billion in Q1 to $9.46 billion in Q2 before dropping to $4.82 billion in Q3.

Investors are still writing some enormous checks, but far fewer companies are receiving funding. The number of distinct funded companies fell from 174 in Q1 to 71 in Q3, confirming that the slowdown extends beyond a handful of companies raising multiple times.

Total dollars can still jump from one quarter to another, largely because individual companies raise hundreds of millions or even billions. The number of companies accessing capital tells a very different story.

Quarter	Deals	Companies	Capital raised	Median round
Q3 2025	118	118	$4.96B	$18.58M
Q4 2025	151	150	$8.66B	$15.00M
Q1 2026	174	174	$5.04B	$10.00M
Q2 2026	124	122	$9.46B	$20.50M
Q3 2026	72	71	$4.82B	$25.00M

Why did FinTech funding take off at the end of 2025?

FinTech fundraising grew rapidly in Q4 2025 because more startups secured funding across several categories, while a few exceptionally large rounds lifted the total.

Deal volume increased 28% from Q3 to Q4, while disclosed capital jumped 74.8% to $8.66 billion. Interestingly, the median financing fell from $18.58 million to $15 million.

That tells us the late-2025 expansion reached smaller companies as well as established businesses. First financings doubled from 17 to 34, while Lending & Credit deals increased from 11 to 29. Capital Markets Tech also expanded from four to 12 transactions.

At the top end, Kalshi raised $1 billion in a financing announced on December 2, 2025, valuing the prediction-market company at $11 billion. Its announcement reported weekly trading volume exceeding $1 billion, more than ten times its 2024 level.

Kalshi's financing helped lift the quarterly total, but the increase in first financings and activity across multiple categories shows that investors were supporting a much wider group of FinTech companies.

The late-2025 expansion was one of the broadest improvements we found. Unfortunately for startups, that momentum would prove difficult to sustain throughout 2026.

Was Q1 2026 actually the best quarter for FinTech startups?

Q1 2026 was the strongest quarter for the number of FinTech startups receiving funding, despite raising much less money than the quarters immediately before and after it.

We counted 174 financings involving 174 distinct companies, making Q1 the busiest quarter in our five-quarter review. Yet total capital fell 41.8% from Q4 2025, reaching approximately $5.04 billion.

The difference came largely from the distribution of deal sizes. The median financing dropped to $10 million, its lowest level in the period, and 50 transactions were worth less than $5 million.

Payments recorded 31 deals, Financial Infrastructure 30, Wealth & Investing 26 and InsurTech 25. Investors were backing companies across several parts of financial services rather than concentrating activity in one particularly fashionable category.

Vestwell's $385 million Series E, announced on February 18, illustrates the other side of that market. The retirement and savings infrastructure company disclosed more than two million active savers, $50 billion in assets and $200 million in annual recurring revenue. Established businesses could still raise large amounts, although they represented a smaller share of total funding than in the surrounding quarters.

When we exclude rounds above $50 million, Q1 investment was nearly identical to Q4, at approximately $1.93 billion. Smaller-company financing held up even as the headline total declined.

For startups seeking ordinary venture rounds, Q1 was arguably the healthiest quarter of the period.

Why did FinTech funding nearly double in Q2 2026 while fewer companies raised money?

FinTech investors made a sharp move toward large financings in Q2 2026, pushing total funding up 87.7% even as deal volume fell 28.7%.

Capital increased from $5.04 billion in Q1 to $9.46 billion in Q2, the highest quarterly total in our study. But the number of transactions dropped from 174 to 124.

The median financing more than doubled, reaching $20.5 million. The number of rounds above $50 million increased from 25 to 35, despite the substantial decline in total deal count.

Kalshi's additional $1 billion financing, announced on May 7, was one of the biggest contributors. The company reported that institutional trading volume had increased 800% over six months and that its annualized trading volume had grown from $52 billion to $178 billion.

Ramp also attracted $750 million in primary financing in June, reaching a reported valuation of $44 billion as the company expanded its AI-powered financial operations platform.

These transactions involved businesses with clear commercial traction and substantial growth ambitions.

The broader market was considerably weaker than the headline capital increase suggested. Funding from rounds of $50 million or less declined 18.2% in Q2, even as the overall total approached $10 billion.

Investors were increasingly concentrating their largest commitments on companies that had already demonstrated significant scale.

Did FinTech funding get even worse in Q3 2026?

FinTech fundraising weakened further in Q3 2026, with fewer deals, less capital and a particularly sharp decline in smaller financings.

Deal count fell 41.9% from Q2, reaching 72 transactions. Capital dropped 49% to $4.82 billion.

The decline was particularly visible after removing large rounds. Funding from deals of $50 million or less decreased from $1.58 billion in Q2 to approximately $908 million in Q3.

Ant International provided the quarter's largest transaction. On July 21, 2026, the company announced approximately $1.2 billion in Series A equity financing to support international expansion, cross-border payments and AI-enabled commerce.

Ant International's financing alone represented almost 25% of Q3 capital. That is particularly striking because the company was already operating across major international markets and reported a network connecting more than 150 million merchants with over two billion user accounts.

The size of that transaction helped sustain the overall quarterly funding total, but it did little to change the picture for younger startups.

As of the latest completed quarter, substantially fewer companies are receiving funding. Large amounts of capital remain available, but mainly to a much smaller group of major businesses.

Are FinTech investors writing bigger checks now?

The typical recorded FinTech financing has become much larger since Q1 2026, even though total fundraising activity has contracted.

Median round size increased from $10 million in Q1 to $20.5 million in Q2 and $25 million in Q3. That represents a 150% increase over two quarters.

The average financing followed a different pattern, reaching $76.33 million in Q2 before falling to $66.98 million in Q3. The gap between the average and median reflects the impact of exceptionally large transactions.

Large rounds are also taking a greater share of capital. Financings above $50 million accounted for 61.8% of investment in Q1, compared with 83.3% in Q2 and 81.2% in Q3.

There is a catch. The higher median comes partly from the disappearance of smaller deals. A shrinking pool of funded startups can produce a higher typical financing amount without making fundraising easier for companies overall.

Our calculations point toward investors becoming more selective about which businesses deserve substantial new capital, particularly as the market moves further into 2026.

Is FinTech funding now dominated by a handful of billion-dollar deals?

FinTech funding has become heavily dependent on large transactions, especially in Q2 and Q3 2026, when more than 80% of capital came from rounds above $50 million.

Concentration has not increased smoothly every quarter. Q1 2026 was comparatively broad, with the five largest rounds representing just 25.1% of investment. That share jumped to 39.1% in Q2 and 45.5% in Q3.

The companies behind the largest financings also changed over time. iCapital's $820 million round led Q3 2025, Kalshi's $1 billion financing dominated Q4, and Vestwell's $385 million investment topped Q1 2026. Kalshi returned with another billion-dollar round in Q2, followed by Ant International's $1.2 billion transaction in Q3.

There is an important difference between an industry where the same company repeatedly raises money and one where different established businesses attract exceptional funding.

FinTech currently shows more of the second pattern. Large opportunities continue emerging across wealth management, prediction markets, corporate financial software and international payments.

The common feature is the size and maturity of the recipients. Investors are comfortable making extraordinary commitments to selected businesses, while ordinary venture financing has weakened considerably.

Measure	Q3 2025	Q4 2025	Q1 2026	Q2 2026	Q3 2026
Largest deal share	16.5%	11.5%	7.6%	10.6%	24.9%
Top-three share	30.3%	28.3%	17.1%	28.0%	36.9%
Top-five share	36.9%	39.8%	25.1%	39.1%	45.5%
Rounds above $50M	25	27	25	35	22
Capital from >$50M rounds	69.4%	77.8%	61.8%	83.3%	81.2%

Are smaller FinTech startups struggling to raise money?

Smaller FinTech startups are securing far fewer rounds than they were earlier in 2026, and the contraction is too large to dismiss as a normal quarterly fluctuation.

Q1 recorded 50 financings below $5 million. By Q3, that number had fallen to eight, an 84% decline.

First financings tell a similar story. They increased from 17 in Q3 2025 to 34 in Q4 and 43 in Q1 2026, before falling to 16 in Q2.

Those first financings represented just 1.7% of total Q2 capital, despite accounting for 12.9% of transactions.

The timing is revealing. While younger companies were securing fewer rounds, Kalshi, Ramp and other established players were raising hundreds of millions or more.

The available figures do not tell us how many entrepreneurs tried to raise money unsuccessfully. They do show that substantially fewer small and first-time financings were completed.

We also found that the median age of companies receiving follow-on funding increased from five years in Q3 2025 to seven years in Q3 2026.

That supports the broader picture of investors favoring companies with more operating history, although gaps in founding-year information prevent us from treating age statistics as definitive.

For now, the financing environment looks particularly difficult for startups without established funding histories or clear commercial proof.

Is Payments becoming the hottest category in FinTech?

Payments is holding up better than most FinTech categories, and its growing share of deals makes it one of the clearest areas of relative strength.

Payments recorded 23 financings in Q3 2025, 26 in Q4 and 31 in Q1 2026. Activity then declined to 19 in Q2 and 18 in Q3.

The category was still losing deals, but much more slowly than the wider market. Its share of FinTech financings increased from 15.3% in Q2 to 25% in Q3.

Ant International's July financing also brought considerable capital into cross-border payment infrastructure.

The company said it would use its $1.2 billion investment to expand merchant payments, account management and AI-supported financial services. Its Alipay+, Antom, WorldFirst and Bettr businesses cover several different parts of international commerce.

Demand for better payment infrastructure is supported by a broader commercial challenge. The World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide research continues to document the cost of moving relatively small amounts of money across borders, an area where digital financial services companies compete to improve speed, transparency and pricing.

Payments has a strong commercial rationale and a relatively resilient funding base. Still, we would need to see deal counts increase again before calling it a fresh funding boom.

Are prediction markets becoming a major FinTech funding category?

Prediction markets have become one of FinTech's most prominent large-funding opportunities, with Kalshi attracting two billion-dollar rounds during the period.

Kalshi's December 2025 Series E valued the company at $11 billion. Its May 2026 Series F raised another $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation, according to the company's announcements.

That doubling in valuation over roughly five months reflects unusually rapid investor enthusiasm.

The commercial evidence also changed. In May, Kalshi reported institutional trading volume up 800% in six months, along with growing use of event contracts by professional market participants.

Its December 2025 partnership with CNN provided another example of prediction-market data expanding beyond trading applications.

The wider Capital Markets Tech category grew alongside this activity. Quarterly deal counts increased from four in Q3 2025 to 12 in Q4 and 20 in Q1 2026, before moving to 19 in Q2 and nine in Q3.

This broader category includes businesses beyond prediction markets, so Kalshi cannot explain every transaction. Nevertheless, its extraordinary fundraising helped establish the category as one of the market's major destinations for large checks.

The decline to nine deals in Q3 suggests that the initial expansion has cooled. Prediction markets may remain commercially important, but their funding momentum has been much less consistent than their biggest valuations suggest.

Which FinTech categories are holding up best right now?

Payments and Digital Banking are currently among the more resilient FinTech categories, while InsurTech and Financial Infrastructure have experienced some of the steepest reductions in deal activity.

Digital Banking recorded six deals in Q3 2025, followed by 11, ten, eight and nine. Its latest count was slightly higher than in Q2, despite the wider market contracting sharply.

Payments also retained most of its Q2 activity.

InsurTech followed the opposite path. Its deal count remained at 25 in both Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 before falling to 18 in Q2 and just four in Q3.

Financial Infrastructure was more volatile. It recorded 27 deals in Q3 2025, dropped to ten in Q4, rebounded to 30 in Q1 2026 and subsequently fell to 15 and six.

Lending & Credit showed a similar loss of momentum after a particularly strong Q4 2025, when it reached 29 deals.

Investors remain interested in core financial services, particularly payments and banking products, while financing has become less predictable in several infrastructure and insurance-related categories.

There is no category showing uninterrupted growth across all five quarters. The useful distinction is between segments that are retaining deal activity and those losing funding opportunities much faster than the rest of the market.

FinTech category	Q3 2025	Q4 2025	Q1 2026	Q2 2026	Q3 2026
Payments	23	26	31	19	18
Digital Banking	6	11	10	8	9
Capital Markets Tech	4	12	20	19	9
Lending & Credit	11	29	16	13	11
Wealth & Investing	19	19	26	18	8
Financial Infrastructure	27	10	30	15	6
InsurTech	18	25	25	18	4
RegTech & Compliance	10	19	16	14	7

Is North America taking over FinTech startup funding?

North America now accounts for nearly 60% of recorded FinTech deals, although its growing share mostly reflects sharper declines elsewhere.

North American financing activity reached 76 deals in Q4 2025 before gradually declining to 62 in Q1 2026, 61 in Q2 and 43 in Q3.

Its share of total financings nevertheless increased from 43.2% in Q3 2025 to 59.7% in Q3 2026.

Europe experienced a much more pronounced reversal. Deal count reached 67 in Q1 2026, overtaking North America's 62, before falling to 45 in Q2 and 13 in Q3.

Asia-Pacific also weakened, dropping from 36 financings in Q4 2025 to just four in Q3 2026.

Yet Asia-Pacific still represented 27.7% of Q3 capital, supported heavily by Ant International's financing. This explains how a region can account for a substantial share of investment while recording very few transactions.

The latest distribution suggests North America has become the most dependable geography for recorded FinTech financing activity. However, its absolute deal volume has also declined, so the increased share should not be mistaken for accelerating regional growth.

Are FinTech investors abandoning early-stage companies for established winners?

FinTech capital is increasingly going toward established businesses, and the clearest change occurred between Q1 and Q2 2026.

Early-stage financings represented more than half of deals in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. Their share subsequently fell below 46% in both Q2 and Q3.

Meanwhile, follow-on transactions dominated the capital totals. Vestwell's Series E, Kalshi's successive late-stage rounds and Ramp's major financing illustrate the size of commitments available to companies that had already built substantial operations.

We also have to look beyond funding-stage labels. Ant International's July 2026 financing was classified as Series A, despite the company already operating a global financial services network.

Treating that transaction like a conventional young startup's Series A would badly distort the interpretation of early-stage investment.

The shift toward established recipients is therefore better supported by company histories, first-financing counts and actual round sizes than by stage labels alone.

Investors are showing a clear preference for businesses with more evidence of product demand, distribution and commercial scale. That preference has become particularly visible as the number of funded companies has fallen.

Are the same investors still backing FinTech startups?

Established venture capital firms are still active in FinTech, but the latest data do not yet prove that investment is becoming concentrated in fewer lead investors.

General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, QED Investors, Index Ventures, TCV and Insight Partners all appear repeatedly in our fundraising records.

The number of distinct disclosed lead investors reached 147 in Q4 2025, compared with 135 in Q3. It then fluctuated between 126 and 136 across Q1 and Q2 2026.

By Q3, we recorded only 46 unique disclosed leads. That looks like a sharp contraction until we examine reporting coverage.

Lead-investor information was available for 88.7% of deals in Q2 but only 55.6% in Q3. The latest quarter therefore contains considerably more missing information.

We can confirm that the observed investor network became smaller as fundraising activity declined. We cannot reliably separate actual investor withdrawal from weaker lead-investor disclosure.

The distinction is especially important when interpreting emerging investor concentration. The financing amounts raised by companies also cannot be treated as the amounts personally committed by their named lead investors.

Are corporate investors pulling back from FinTech?

Corporate and other strategic investors appear less frequently in FinTech financings than they did in 2025, with recorded participation declining in every quarterly comparison.

Strategic-backed transactions represented 36.4% of deals in Q3 2025, falling to 32.5% in Q4, 29.3% in Q1 2026, 27.4% in Q2 and 20.8% in Q3.

That is a substantial change over five consecutive quarters.

The number of strategic-backed deals also declined from 51 in Q1 2026 to 34 in Q2 and 15 in Q3. Yet their median financing amount remained relatively large, at $25 million in the latest quarter.

The areas attracting strategic capital changed too. Financial Infrastructure and Wealth & Investing together accounted for 21 strategic-backed transactions in Q3 2025. By Q1 2026, Payments and InsurTech accounted for 24.

The July 2026 Ant International financing illustrates how strategic support can remain significant even as the number of such deals declines. Existing investors Ant Group and Alibaba participated in the approximately $1.2 billion transaction.

The decline in recorded strategic participation is one of the more persistent patterns in our study. The classifications still require investor-level verification before drawing firm conclusions about every corporate investor's behavior.

Is AI now driving the biggest FinTech funding rounds?

AI is becoming an important part of the investment case for large FinTech platforms, particularly companies that already handle substantial financial activity.

Ramp's June 2026 financing is a useful example. The company raised $750 million in primary capital while expanding its approach to AI-powered financial operations.

Ramp's co-founder Eric Glyman also described a growing need for businesses to manage spending on AI tokens alongside employee and vendor expenses, effectively treating AI consumption as another major operating cost.

That commercial direction gives investors a concrete reason to finance platforms that can automate financial workflows and manage more complicated business spending.

Ant International provides another example. Its July financing was explicitly linked to AI-supported merchant services and cross-border commerce.

However, Kalshi's billion-dollar financings were driven by a different opportunity: the expansion of event-contract trading and institutional participation in prediction markets.

These companies show several distinct reasons why investors are committing extraordinary amounts to FinTech. AI is increasingly prominent, but the biggest financing rounds still span multiple business models.

For investors, AI becomes more compelling when a company can connect it to existing customers, transaction volumes or financial operations. We have stronger evidence of that connection among established platforms than among the shrinking population of newly funded startups.

Is the FinTech funding slowdown likely to continue?

The FinTech funding slowdown has enough momentum to remain concerning, particularly for younger companies, but the evidence does not support calling it permanent.

The most persistent negative development is the decline in deal volume since Q1 2026. Smaller financings and first-time recipients also weakened, while strategic-backed transactions became less common.

The increase in median round size has continued across two quarterly transitions, suggesting the funded-company mix has shifted toward larger transactions.

Other developments look much less stable. Capital Markets Tech grew strongly before reversing. Payments gained relative market share without increasing absolute deal count. And Q2's record funding total disappeared almost as quickly as it emerged.

For a meaningful recovery, we would want to see more companies raising money, a rebound in first financings and an increase in capital outside the largest rounds.

A new billion-dollar transaction could lift total funding tomorrow without improving conditions for the average startup.

The market's next meaningful turning point will therefore be easier to identify through the number and diversity of completed financings than through the headline dollar total alone.

What is the FinTech funding trend actually telling us?

FinTech funding is becoming more selective, with capital increasingly flowing toward established companies while financing opportunities for smaller startups have narrowed.

The strongest evidence is the sustained decline in transaction volume after Q1 2026. The latest quarter recorded fewer than half as many deals as the peak, alongside a substantial contraction in smaller financings.

Large-round concentration has become a defining feature of the market. In the two latest quarters, transactions above $50 million accounted for more than 80% of disclosed capital.

Company maturity also matters more. Follow-on financings dominate investment, while unusually large rounds involving Kalshi, Ramp and Ant International illustrate the amounts available to businesses with established operations or rapidly growing commercial markets.

Payments and Digital Banking have shown relative resilience. InsurTech, Financial Infrastructure and several other categories have seen considerably sharper reductions in deal activity.

Strategic-investor participation has declined consistently in the records, although incomplete investor disclosures limit how much we can conclude about the broader investor network.

FinTech remains capable of attracting very large private investments. The weakness sits in the number of companies gaining access to that capital.

A lasting recovery will become more convincing when funding begins reaching more startups again, rather than when the next established company announces another billion-dollar round.