In the Italian venture ecosystem, one line gets repeated like a mantra: “there’s no fintech here”. The common narrative paints Italy as a desert, where startups can’t grow because banks block innovation, regulators slow everything down, and bureaucracy strangles whatever is left. Compared to London, Europe’s buzzing fintech capital, Milan does feel quiet.
But is this true? Not really. Look closer, and you’ll see that Italian fintech isn’t dead. Far from it. The seeds of a new ecosystem have been planted, and they’re already evolving into companies that matter.
For decades, Italy’s financial sector has been very closed off. Big banks (no need to drop names) controlled most of the trust, the distribution, and the customer relationships. That left fintech founders with two painful options: spend years climbing over regulatory walls, or hide behind incumbents as white-label providers. Both routes slowed things down.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe, regulators pulled the opposite lever. The UK’s FCA sandbox and open banking rules put London into fintech overdrive, while Italy stayed stuck with fragmented laws, complicated licenses, and a culture that still whispers “permission first, innovation later”. The talent pipeline didn’t help either. Too many of Italy’s brightest engineers, product designers, and even ex-bankers decided to fly out, destination London, Berlin, Paris, or Dubai, hungry for bigger challenges. Investors followed similar logic. Local VCs preferred the neat, less controversial worlds of not ambitious SaaS, healthtech, and marketplaces. Fintech looked messy, risky, and weighed down by compliance headaches. For years, the result was predictable: easy to believe Italy had nothing happening.
And yet deserts hide oases. In recent years Italian fintech companies have managed to raise hundreds of millions. Scalapay became a BNPL unicorn with over $700 million, while Satispay hauled in €320 million and now ranks among Europe’s largest independent payment networks; Aidexa blended equity and debt to build SME lending at scale, Moneyfarm… around this, other names, Smartness, Sibill, Qomodo, Tundr, Homepay, Subbyx, Pillar, Tot, BonusX and many others have each pulled in rounds that fly in the face of the desert narrative. Growth Capital’s most recent report made it clear: in the first half of 2025, fintech wasn’t a ghost sector, it was one of the top verticals by total capital invested. The ecosystem is far from dry…
Italy is blooming late but in its own way, a new wave of founders is stronger, many trained in a more international ecosystem, in scale ups, blue-chip companies or even inside traditional banks before choosing to break out and build. Valuations still run 20 to 30 percent lower than those of Northern Europe, a discount that makes Italy unusually attractive to investors willing to take a mid-term bet. Consumers, especially Millennials and Gen Z, are shaking things up as well. They expect financial services to be mobile-first, transparent, and instant, and they are increasingly intolerant of the slowness that defines traditional banks. Add to this the size of the domestic market, 60 million people, one of the highest densities of POS terminals in Europe, a €300 billion payments flow, strong card penetration and rapid adoption of BNPL and wallets, and it becomes harder and harder to explain away Italy’s fintech opportunity. Regulation, always a sticking point, is also moving. PSD3 and the EU’s digital identity wallet promise to lower barriers and make scaling cross-border easier than ever.
The story isn’t just about potential; it’s also about what investors are already seeing on the ground. At IAG, over the past 12 months we’ve witnessed this momentum first-hand, backing models such as Pillar, which is reimagining the intersection of construction and finance; LEASY, opening vehicle financing to gig workers in Latin America; a stealth startup extracting financial value from products at the end of their lifecycle; Subbyx, a platform that gives access to the latest tech products-smartphones, tablets, and laptops-through a flexible subscription model; and Homepay, which is building the payment infrastructure behind real estate.
Sure, money matters. But so do people. That’s why we host rooftop gatherings where founders, operators, and investors come together. Because an ecosystem doesn’t just grow on capital - it grows on connections, conversations, and trust.
This shows something important about venture capital: big fintech success stories don’t happen overnight. Some startups can reach revenue quickly, especially with AI, but chasing only fast wins means missing the companies that grow slowly and reshape entire markets. Stripe, Adyen, Nubank, they all took years to build. Italian fintech probably needs the same shift in mindset, a move away from hype and quick wins toward patience, discipline, strong network and real value creation, where you need to build trust and brand awareness with consumers.
Just a few days ago, I spoke with a founder who made this point clearly: the hype around instant growth and flashy launches can be misleading. Many products look great in demos but fail when real users try them. Even big companies fall into this trap. Building real value takes time, attention to detail, and a focus on solving genuine problems. Quick wins may grab headlines, but long-term impact comes from doing things properly, from real pain and fintech is probably the sector that most needs this kind of approach.
Italian fintech, then, isn’t dead, it’s just maturing on a different timeline. What looked like a desert a few years ago now shows signs of resilience, creativity, and slow but steady momentum. The real winners will be those who resist the temptation of shortcuts and instead commit to solving real problems with discipline and persistence. If history is any guide, fintech revolutions rarely happen in a flash; they’re built layer by layer. Italy’s ecosystem may have started later than London’s or Berlin’s, but the foundations are being laid, the talent is coming back, and the capital is flowing. Call it a late bloom if you want, but a bloom it is, and it’s only just sprouting.