Italy’s fintech sector, within the landscape of continental Europe, does not fall short in terms of either the number of companies or the level of investment. And yet the sector struggles to express its full potential, like a car with the handbrake on.
What that brake is becomes clear from the results of the second report by the European Financial Services Tech Hub of SDA Bocconi, which we produced together with Jessica Baro, Pierpaolo Cuglietta, and Raffaele Turazzo: Italian fintechs have talent, skills, and international recognition, but what is lacking are the structural conditions that allow them to grow, scale, integrate with incumbents, attract capital, and truly compete at the European level.
After two years of work, the Hub’s researchers have identified four pillars to act upon (governance, regulation, ecosystem, and innovation) and the levers to be activated within each pillar to enable Italian fintech to become a real engine of competitiveness.
Increasing the value of Italian fintech
The 2025 research represents the second year of the Hub’s work. While in 2024 the objective was to rigorously define what is meant by fintech and how to assess it, by building taxonomies, metrics, and evaluation models for startups, in 2025 the focus shifted to providing guidance on the actions to be taken, by addressing the following questions:
- How can the value of the Italian (and European) fintech ecosystem be increased?
- Which European best practices really work?
- How are other countries making their ecosystems more attractive?
- Which levers have a measurable impact on overall competitiveness?
The analysis also has the merit of offering a systematic comparison with other European hubs.
Fieldwork
The team conducted interviews with major European hubs, collected data from Italian fintechs and incumbents, reviewed the literature, and combined these insights with market data and econometric models.
The analysis was carried out on a sample that includes ten countries (the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Austria, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, and Romania) and identified four pillars that influence the competitiveness of a fintech ecosystem. Within each pillar, the levers useful for unlocking the potential of Italian and European fintech were identified.
Governance & management: retaining talent is the strategic priority
The evidence shows strong alignment between Europe and Italy: governance is a critical factor for attracting capital and consolidating companies. However, Italy suffers from two recurring issues: poorly diversified boards (predominantly male) and a strong dependence on traditional economic and financial profiles.
Activating initiatives to retain talent is the lever identified by the report. The sector trains highly qualified professionals who often migrate toward ecosystems perceived as more dynamic (the UK, Germany, the Netherlands). Retention, therefore, becomes a policy objective as well as a managerial one.
Regulation: enabling, but too rigid
All interviewees agree that regulation is an essential enabling factor for protecting consumers and investors. In Italy, however, it is also perceived as insufficiently flexible.
The main critical issues highlighted are the interpretative uncertainty of European rules, the absence of a functioning regulatory sandbox, and excessive rigidity, which discourages foreign investment. The comparison with Lithuania is emblematic: despite sharing the European regulatory perimeter, the country has created a highly attractive fintech ecosystem thanks to effective sandboxes, tax incentives, and programs dedicated to integration with banks.
The proposed lever consists of defining a flexible, harmonized, and clear regulatory framework, with interoperable sandboxes at the European level.
Ecosystem: from local aggregation to national critical mass
This is the most strategic pillar. Today, Italy does not have a truly unified fintech ecosystem; instead, it has many small local clusters that compete with one another rather than collaborate. This reduces international visibility, the ability to attract capital, and integration with banks.
The data show that fintech–incumbent collaborations are perceived as difficult, technology is seen as an obstacle, the regulatory structure does not help, and sandboxes are viewed as a lever of trust and credibility that remains underdeveloped.
A strong ecosystem is a prerequisite for attracting talent, capital, and industrial partnerships. The identified lever is twofold: creating a cohesive national ecosystem and connecting it to European networks, as countries such as the Netherlands and Lithuania have done.
Innovation: three trends, three speeds
The Hub chose to focus on three innovative trends, positioned along three different maturity curves:
- Artificial intelligence (AI and Gen AI): already consolidated.
- Tokenization: accelerating.
- Super apps: emerging and with transformative potential.
Gen AI is already used by 35 percent of European fintechs, with a market that could exceed $22 billion by 2030. The identified applications are numerous, and the goal is no longer simply to integrate AI, but to achieve business objectives using AI as well.
The market for tokenized real-world assets could reach $16 trillion by 2030, and crypto market capitalization has already exceeded $3.5 trillion in 2025. In Italy, adoption could triple by 2030, driven by sectors such as art, luxury, Made in Italy, and even by potential use in public debt.
Super apps are the most divisive and most promising trend. Super apps are mobile platforms that aggregate multiple financial and non-financial services (such as messaging, payments and e-wallets, delivery and mobility, trading, e-commerce, and booking) within a single integrated experience. Their development in Asia shows that super apps can become central infrastructures of digital life and that their diffusion has a significant macroeconomic effect on GDP growth.
The most important lever within the “Innovation” pillar is therefore the expansion of the super apps’ user base.
A call to policy makers
The policy implications are profound and interconnected: the four pillars reinforce one another.
Policy makers are called upon to support talent retention through tax measures, dedicated programs, and pathways for founders; to create truly operational and interoperable regulatory sandboxes; to simplify and clarify the regulatory framework by reducing uncertainty and compliance burdens; and to support the unification of the national ecosystem and its connection to European networks.
In 2026, the Hub’s activity will continue, with the objectives of proposing systemic recommendations at the Italian and European levels, outlining evolutionary scenarios for fintech, and consolidating evidence on innovation, investment, and policy.
