ShopifyFor journalists · key findings
Six things this dataset says
FINDING 01
2.7× more
companies disclose their sponsor bank than name their KYC vendor (51 vs 19). The compliance layer goes dark by design.
FINDING 02
171
third-party providers serve the 542 fintechs in the dataset — defined as ≥2 disclosed buyers or recognized Open Banking Tracker vendor.
FINDING 03
95 non-bank fintechs
have crossed from vendor relationship to owned banking, clearing, or card-issuing infrastructure — Square Financial Services, Coinbase, LendingClub Bank and others.
FINDING 04
Zero overlap
between US, UK, and EU BaaS leaders. US: Cross River / Bancorp / Helix by Q2. UK: ClearBank (3× the runner-up) / Modulr / Griffin. EU: Mangopay / Treezor / Solaris.
FINDING 05
US discloses 3-5×
more than other regions. 35% of US fintechs name their sponsor bank vs. 7-21% elsewhere — the widest gap is US vs EU (35% vs 7%). Driven by US regulatory disclosure norms (FDIC member badges, BSA/AML attestations) that don't exist in UK/EU.
FINDING 06
Stripe #1
PSP by disclosed-buyer count (21 of 542, 3.9%). BaaS leader: Griffin (7, 1.3%). Most-cited accounting connector: Stripe (3.0%).
Section 02 · disclosure rates
Which layers are auditable. Which go dark.
For each layer of the embedded-finance stack: what share of 542 analyzed fintechs publicly named a vendor? The gap between the green and red rows is the dark half of the stack — the layers regulators, integrity researchers, and journalists can’t audit from outside.
Layer
% masked ?
% disclosed
52.8%masked
50.2%
69.8%masked
12.2%
78.7%masked
11.8%
27.4%masked
11.3%
13.7%masked
9.4%
70.5%masked
8.7%
48.6%masked
6.8%
45.8%masked
6.6%
15.8%masked
3.5%
66.7%masked
1.3%
—
0.2%
Regulatorily disclosed (named on trust/regulatory surface) Commercially disclosed (named via case studies, partnerships) Trade-secret layer (rarely disclosed publicly)
What this meansThe payments side of the stack is auditable from outside. The risk side isn’t. Public datasets of vendor relationships — including this one — will always over-represent payments and under-represent KYC, fraud, and sanctions screening. Treat the red rows as a floor, not a ceiling. The “% masked” column is the second-order finding: even when a layer IS disclosed, a meaningful fraction of companies talk about their own-brand product (“Acme Pay”, “Acme Checkout”) without identifying the underlying provider. ~34% of fintechs that mention a PSP, and ~37% of fintechs that mention BaaS, hide the actual infrastructure behind a brand wrapper — a structural masking effect that makes the auditable-looking layers thinner than they appear.
“Open banking opened the access door to financial data, but access and usability are not the same thing. A full internal transaction record carries around nine usable data points. What comes through an open banking API is typically two, sometimes four.”
— Ivan Dovica · CEO & Co-founder, Tapix by Dateio
Section 03 · dataset composition
What kind of fintech are these?
The 542 fintechs in this dataset split into 9 working categories. Infrastructure providers (BaaS, card issuing, PSP) sit alongside the platforms that consume them (vertical SaaS, marketplaces, B2B fintech) — the report is a snapshot of an ecosystem where buyer and seller often appear in the same chart. 834 entries were excluded as non-fintech (investor/advisory firms, non-financial orgs, press fragments) before this breakdown.
261·48.2%
69·12.7%
49·9.0%
31·5.7%
29·5.4%
28·5.2%
19·3.5%
16·3.0%
14·2.6%
12·2.2%
9·1.7%
5·0.9%
Segments resolved via an enrichment cache + a local-profile fallback classifier sniffing each company’s public industry, tagline, and thesis. “Other” entries are kept in the dataset; we surface them as a visible gap rather than dropping them or guessing.
You’ve reached the teaser
The full report continues with sponsor banks, regional breakdowns, the self-banked club, the BaaS failure cycle, and methodology.
Subscribe for the launch and it lands the day the full index opens. Journalists and analysts who need it sooner: use the press route below.
- Six more sectionsSponsor banks, regional breakdowns, the self-banked club, the BaaS failure cycle, methodology.
- The provider landscapeOpen Banking Tracker's 300+ providers across 16 categories, plus every provider this Index verifies as active.
- The datasetThe underlying disclosures, so you can check any number yourself.
With thanks
The voices behind this report
Every claim in this report is source-cited to a filing, a disclosure, or a press release — but a few sections lean on the people who live this market every day. Their expertise sharpened the read; this is where we say so.
“Requirements such as independent reconciliation, per-partner FBO accounts and treasury-grade audit trails are becoming standard — capabilities that are significantly faster to access through established partners.”
“Payments may be the entry point, but lending is becoming the real revenue engine for vertical SaaS platforms because they own operational data traditional lenders do not have access to.”
“Open banking opened the access door to financial data, but access and usability are not the same thing. A full internal transaction record carries around nine usable data points. What comes through an open banking API is typically two, sometimes four.”
“Linking a third-party bank account inside a primary banking app is now seen by customers as a baseline feature rather than a nice-to-have, and institutions that do not offer it stand out for the wrong reasons.”