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Fintech District celebrates 8th anniversary, grows alongside fintech, techfin in Italy

Tuesday, September 30, 2025 — 17:45:31 (UTC)

Milan, 30 September, 2025 – Eight years have passed since the Fintech District was founded in 2017 by Sella Group and promoted with the aim of contributing to the development of the fintech community and ecosystem in Italy.

Starting with 22 start-ups, over the years Fintech District has become the leading international community for the Fintech and Techfin ecosystem in Italy and now includes more than 300 companies, including fintech companies, corporate, professional and ecosystem partners of primary importance.

A role that it has developed over time through projects and initiatives designed to encourage and support the growth of the Italian ecosystem and to spread fintech culture, promoting partnerships and collaborations through matchmaking, which has facilitated over 450 meetings. In eight years, more than 50 corporates and professionals from various sectors – from banking to consulting to telecoms – have actively collaborated with the Fintech District.

Furthermore, for the third consecutive year, Fintech District has supported VISA in the Innovation Program Europe, a platform designed to promote the growth of fintech start-ups that have developed solutions ready to be brought to market and to facilitate collaboration, experimentation and scalability between companies, financial institutions and partners in the Visa network in Southern Europe.

The Fintech District today

The community is more vibrant than ever, and in the first nine months of 2025 alone, 30 fintech and techfin companies joined the Fintech District. Of these, over 50% are foreign companies, coming from both EU and non-EU countries.

Although Italy continues to hold the “geographical” lead, the Fintech District confirms its increasingly international dimension, with a growing number of fintech companies from countries such as France (20), the UK (16), Germany (10), the USA (8) and Switzerland (6).

Not only variety in terms of origin, but also in terms of sectors. While payments industry remains one of the most represented sectors with 50 fintech companies, over the years Fintech District has demonstrated its ability to identify market trends, welcoming companies from different fields, including: Techfin (83), Wealthtech (30), Insurtech (25), Crypto & Defi (20), Lending (19), and Regtech (19).

Techfin brings together companies that offer technological services – such as AI, cybersecurity and data solutions – to a sector that is broader than just finance. With the incorporation of dpixel, this area will become increasingly vibrant and expansive, bringing to the community a range of companies ready to work across multiple sectors.

Looking more closely at the companies that make up the community, it emerges that 30% are international companies operating in the Italian market; 12% fall into the “Fintech 4 Good” category – i.e. companies with a strong focus on sustainability and ESG solutions, creating a direct link between finance and concrete social and environmental benefits; 10% are led by a female CEO or have a woman among their founders, and 11 are unicorns, i.e. companies that have achieved a market valuation of over one billion dollars.

In terms of growth strategies, however, over 37% intend to expand in Europe, around 14% are focusing solely on the Italian market, while just under 10% are targeting North America.

Fintech District’s position offers a unique vantage point over the entire ecosystem, providing insight into current market trends and the ability to anticipate those that will shape the near future.In recent months, the study ‘Founders vs Investors: two faces of Fintech funding’ was presented, carried out in collaboration with EY and dedicated to funding in the Fintech sector. The report focused on the relationship between start-ups and investors, with the aim of exploring the strategies and fundraising difficulties faced by Italian Fintech companies; understanding the selection criteria and expectations of investors; highlighting systemic obstacles such as regulatory pressure, model scalability and the gap between capital supply and demand.

A gateway to the Italian market

Fintech District is not only a point of reference for the entire Italian sector, but also a gateway and facilitator for foreign companies wishing to enter our market, even thanks to the Soft Landing program offered in collaboration with Milano&Partners – the official promotion agency for the city of Milan – which provides all the necessary support during the initial stages of entry.

In four years, Fintech District and Milano & Partners have met over 250 companies from various countries (mainly the US, UK, France and Canada). Of these, more than 10% have joined the Fintech District community – meaning they have at least one customer on the Italian market – and around 5% have opened a registered office in Milan thanks to the program.

An increasingly international hub

In 2024, the Fintech District collaborated with other fintech hubs and associations in Europe, including Fintech Belgium, Fintech Latvian Association and Fintech Poland, through Ecosystem Partnership agreements.

As a result of these collaborations, the first events in the “A Global Fintech Bridge” webinar series were held in recent months, with the Fintech District and representatives of the fintech market involved providing an overview of developments in their respective ecosystems. Collaboration with other countries will be further strengthened in the coming months, thanks to the entry of several foreign companies into the community and new webinars in the series.

Not only fintech

Through cross-sector projects, Fintech District aims to respond to new market demands, both in Europe and globally. In the future, the focus will increasingly be on targeted projects, such as reports dedicated to exploring specific topics in the world of fintech, open innovation as a service, and events tailored to the needs of the ecosystem.

With this in mind, the call for Texploration, the national and international open innovation project promoted and launched by MagnoLab - a network of companies for innovation in the textile supply chain based in Magnonevolo (Biella) - and implemented by dpixel, the division of Fintech District that supports the growth of start-ups and business innovation by promoting business opportunities through open innovation projects.

The call was aimed at start-ups, scale-ups and innovative SMEs capable of developing new solutions for the textile industry.

Againthrough dpixel, the team is working for the Italian Space Agency in the context of Spacefounders, a European acceleration program for the aerospace sector, promoted by ASI together with CNES (French Space Agency) and the University of the Bundeswehr Munich.

Clelia Tosi, Head of Fintech District, commented: "Fintech District was created to respond to a concrete market need: to offer a point of reference to the fintech world, which was beginning to interact with banks, insurance companies and corporations. In recent years, the context has changed rapidly and we, together with our community, have been able to evolve with it, developing new projects, interpreting emerging needs and developing solutions capable of supporting the open innovation that the market needs. Today, Fintech District is a recognised hub that enhances synergies between different players, creating growth opportunities for the entire ecosystem and continuing to reflect the transformation of fintech, which is now much broader and more complex than when it first began with digital payments. We do this with projects dedicated to fintech and beyond, with a strong propensity for innovation that leads us to open up to cross-cutting sectors and initiatives.

The fintech ecosystem is alive and has reached a new stage of maturity. The signs we are seeing are encouraging, and this represents a further incentive to continue on the path we embarked on eight years ago”.

About Fintech District

Fintech District is the leading international community for the Fintech and Techfin ecosystem in Italy. It acts as an ecosystem aggregator with the aim of creating the best conditions for all stakeholders (fintech, financial institutions, corporate companies, professionals, institutions, investors) to work in synergy and find opportunities for local and international growth. The organisations that choose to join share a propensity for innovation and a desire to develop collaborations based on openness and sharing. The community now has more than 300 leading fintech and corporate companies. Fintech District also has relationships with equivalent foreign innovation hubs to multiply investment and cooperation opportunities, affirming its role as a gateway and reference point for the Italian market. Founded in 2017, Fintech District is part of Fabrick and is based in Milan in the COPERNICO ISOLA FOR S32 building, at Via Sassetti 32. Fintech District: www.fintechdistrict.com

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Source: Company press release.

Categories: Announcement