Research suggests that banks already maintain an average of 9.4 fintech partnerships and spend roughly US$378 million per year on digital transformation. Yet many of these collaborations have failed to deliver lasting value – often because of vague goals or unclear performance metrics. If banks and fintechs want to unlock the next wave of innovation, they must rethink how they work together.
The first phase of partnerships
Early relationships between banks and fintechs resembled vendor contracts, where fintechs plugged apps and user interfaces into banking systems. These arrangements helped test demand but often created duplication, clashing risk appetites, and left compliance gaps. Banks’ customers were frequently required to complete separate onboarding processes with both parties. The result was duplicated effort, frustration, and limited efficiency.
Compliance and regulation mature the model
That model began to change as fintechs recruited compliance specialists from banks and invested in their own robust KYC and monitoring systems. Today, banks can increasingly treat fintechs as trusted extensions of their compliance frameworks rather than peripheral suppliers. This change has been driven both by regulation and by fintechs themselves, that have invested heavily in compliance and risk frameworks. Today, collaboration looks less like a technology plug-in and more like a genuine growth strategy.
In Europe, these efforts aligned with a wider regulatory push. The SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme has made real-time euro payments the default, while the EU’s proposed Payment Services Directive 3 (PSD3) and Financial Data Access Regulation (FIDA) are set to expand open banking and strengthen consumer protections.
The benefits of collaboration
For banks, these partnerships offer a chance to reach new customers without heavy up-front costs. Fintechs effectively act as an outsourced sales channel, packaging bank products in novel ways to appeal to niche or underserved markets.
Fintechs, meanwhile, gain access to bank accounts, clearing networks and trusted infrastructure. With that foundation they can build new propositions – from embedded lending to cross-border payments – underpinned by the credibility of established institutions.

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By GlobalDataThis collaboration also plays out differently across geographies. The UK has been an early leader in open banking, creating fertile ground for bank-fintech partnerships. By December 2024, the country had 12 million open-banking users and processed 14 billion API calls, more than double the combined total in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
The UK’s broader fintech ecosystem remains one of the largest globally, home to over 3,300 firms as of 2024. This scale gives banks a wide range of potential partners, from payments specialists to AI-driven risk managers.
A new model emerges
The nature of partnerships is evolving. In the past, many collaborations looked like transactional vendor relationships – white-label products without shared risk or reward – and rarely delivered transformative results. Now, more are structured as joint ventures, co-branded products or revenue-sharing agreements. This alignment of incentives is becoming the make-or-break factor.
The lesson has been clear: the most successful partnerships start with clear business objectives, dedicated partnership teams within banks, and strong frameworks that guide fintechs through complex processes.
Looking ahead
Banks are not rethinking partnerships to assert greater control, but to ensure they deliver meaningful outcomes. By unifying the best of fintech and banking, combining banks’ regulatory expertise and infrastructure with fintechs’ innovation and agility, collaborations can move beyond experimentation and become the foundation of future financial services. With clear objectives, strong compliance, and shared incentives, what was once an experiment is now becoming the engine of the next wave of financial innovation.
Chris Gliva is Global Head of Banking Partnerships at Sokin