Finextra and Visa Direct set July webinar on European fintech scale-up

Finextra will host an online webinar with Visa Direct on 7 July 2026 to examine how European fintech companies are scaling across payments, wealth and lending. The event page shows 160 registrations and cites Finch Capital data projecting the European fintech market to grow from $85.52bn in 2025 to $94.14bn in 2026.

The session, scheduled for 15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST and 10:00 EDT, will focus on the commercial and regulatory conditions shaping fintech expansion in Europe. Finextra says the discussion will draw on findings from its forthcoming 2026 State of Fintech in Europe report, produced in association with Visa Direct.

The agenda points to a sector that has continued to attract attention within European technology investing while facing practical limits to cross-border growth. According to Finextra, companies trying to expand across the region must address fragmented national markets, different regulatory regimes and uneven payments and financial infrastructure.

Those barriers matter for operators because fintech scaling is rarely a single-market exercise. A neobank, for example, may need licensing, local compliance capacity, customer onboarding tools and payments access in each country it enters. A lending platform may face different credit rules and data requirements, while a wealth business may need to handle country-specific investor protections and product permissions.

Focus on hubs, sectors and partnerships

The webinar will consider what distinguishes emerging European fintech hubs and how companies choose expansion strategies across payments, wealth and lending. Finextra says the panel will also examine where partnerships can support growth, including in markets where infrastructure, distribution or regulatory coverage varies by jurisdiction.

Partnerships are a common mechanism in fintech expansion because they can give firms access to payment rails, banking services, data connectivity or enterprise customers without building every component in-house. The webinar description frames those relationships as part of the discussion on how fintechs can turn product innovation into durable regional scale.

Finextra also identifies artificial intelligence, improvements in payments infrastructure and greater use of digital assets as technologies influencing how fintechs build and operate. The event description does not provide specific adoption figures for those technologies, but says they are reshaping the operating models available to European fintech businesses.

Speakers from Visa, Bitpanda and Plaid

The speaker list includes Olga Ovchinnikova, vice-president and head of Visa Direct Europe at Visa; Benjamin Kruk, executive director and global head of product and client solutions at Bitpanda Enterprise; and Liam Gray, head of customer relationships for the UK and Europe at Plaid.

Scott Hamilton, global payments and liquidity expert and contributing editor at Finextra, is listed as moderator.

The event is open for online registration through Finextra. The registration form requests a business email address, name, job title, organisation, country and institutional category, and includes separate consent options for receiving communications from Finextra Research, Visa Direct and third-party campaigns sent via Finextra.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.