2020 acted as a stress test for product innovation and business models. And European fintech companies passed the test with dignity: they managed increased load in online services well, provided the infrastructure for government support, and continued to evaluate and provide risky products, despite the economic uncertainty.
The lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed bottlenecks as well as the most promising areas for financial developments. Embedded finance, account-to-account payments, smart real-time data, low-code fintech, hybrid products and digital assets ― European tech companies are sufficiently experienced in these areas. But there is still a lot of work to be done to foster a fintech ecosystem that helps individuals and businesses make better decisions.