Fintech’s easy-money era is over, and this VC cycle is separating durable businesses from mere hype-driven expansion. In a market defined by macro pressure, regulatory friction, and tighter capital, the companies moving ahead are not chasing vanity growth. They are building resilient models, critical infrastructure, and business models with explicit paths to profitability, often expanding financial access along the way.

Across emerging markets, especially, founders are building through volatility, and investors are resetting around discipline and outcomes rather than momentum. Based on what the Accion Ventures team is seeing across our portfolio and global markets, we believe seven trends are shaping how the fintech landscape is evolving in 2026 and beyond.

1. Infrastructure is a core enabler of inclusion

Across the globe, financial infrastructure has become a dominant investment theme for inclusive fintech, spanning payment rails, identity and verification layers, MSME credit infrastructure, compliance tooling, and cross-market data systems. The companies in this space are building the digital backbone that modern financial services depend on, including the APIs, data networks, and compliance frameworks that allow institutions to onboard customers faster, move money more efficiently, and operate across fragmented markets. By reducing operational friction and lowering the marginal cost of serving each additional user, infrastructure builders are enabling fintechs and traditional financial service providers to reach populations that were previously too costly or complex to serve. Investment is especially strong in Latin America and South and Southeast Asia, where infrastructure is transforming previously inaccessible populations into addressable markets and strengthening interoperability across financial ecosystems.

While many of these platforms now incorporate AI-driven capabilities, their core value lies in the underlying networks, data systems, and regulatory infrastructure they establish. These builders function as inclusion multipliers. They do not always interact directly with end users, but they remove bottlenecks such as manual onboarding, fragmented data, and high compliance costs that have historically limited access. In doing so, they are not simply supporting financial services growth. Our portfolio companies TransBnk and Finfra illustrate how infrastructure is streamlining complex payment flows and supply chain financing for small businesses, translating data and automation into tangible operating leverage.

2. AI is reshaping financial services

AI is rapidly evolving from experimental tooling to applied systems embedded directly into financial services, powering voice and video customer engagement, compliance workflows, underwriting, and credit profiling, particularly where formal financial records might be scarce.

These capabilities are expanding into building credit profiles for thin-file borrowers, dynamic underwriting, fraud detection, and automated regulatory monitoring, while early adoption of agentic AI is emerging across both consumer and B2B commerce, from automated financial operations to intelligent procurement and customer support. This evolution is widening the surface area where financial services intersect with everyday commercial activity. While Trukkr exemplifies agentic AI in underwriting and customer engagement functions, our B2B marketplaces, such as Agrim and Field, are increasingly deploying agentic AI to unlock efficiencies internally and within the supply chain in a bid to pass on the benefits to the customer and thus differentiate themselves.

We now have strong emerging evidence that this shift has strong commercial lifts for companies. As we look ahead to the rest of 2026, we are excited to see increasing implementation of multi-modality, where customers can bridge language and digital literacy barriers by having their voice, video, or images translated into commands and workflows. At the same time, we are hopeful to see increased transparency and explainability of model inferences as we look to exciting tech, but responsibly.

3. Payments, stablecoins, and data are converging – with caveats

Cross-border payments continue to attract significant capital, driven by the challenge of interoperability across cards, wallets, bank transfers, and stablecoins in different countries. In our experience, the strongest models embed payments directly into daily workflows, pairing them with risk infrastructure and pricing aligned to cash flows, as seen in our portfolio company Triply, which integrates cross-border payments acceptance directly into its core operating platform for travel operators.

Stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat assets, are increasingly shaped by clearer regulations, including frameworks such as the GENIUS Act in the U.S. and MiCA in the EU. While compelling use cases are emerging in Latin America and Africa, particularly for remittances and currency volatility, not every application meaningfully advances financial inclusion. Impact depends on reliable on-ramps and off-ramps and careful consideration of second-order effects, including how liquidity, pricing, and risk shift as products scale across markets. At the same time, evolving data-sharing and monetization models within open banking could materially alter unit economics for embedded finance globally.

As we look toward the future, we believe the convergence of payments, stablecoins, and data offers opportunity, but execution, regulatory navigation, and infrastructure reliability remain critical. For founders, the advice is clear: focus on workflow integration, regulatory compliance, and sustainable liquidity management to capture cross-border and embedded finance growth.

4. Exits are at the center of the venture conversation

With a large cohort of funds approaching later stages of their lifecycle, both limited and general partners have sharpened their focus on liquidity and realized returns rather than purely on valuations. This is elevating exit readiness as a core criterion for portfolio underwriting and support. Secondary market activity has become a key liquidity channel, with transaction volumes expanding as LPs and GPs seek structured ways to realize gains and manage capital without waiting for a traditional exit. Reports show secondary deal value hitting record levels, underscoring growing use of these markets for interim liquidity.

At the same time, the broader exit landscape is showing signs of revival. Early 2026 data points to a resurgence in PE and VC exit activity, including IPOs and strategic M&A, breaking the prolonged “exit logjam” that had constrained capital rotations in recent years. Well-executed liquidity events provide important signals for market confidence and reset pricing expectations.

In 2026, we expect founders to be increasingly evaluated on capital discipline and scalability with liquidity pathways in mind, while investors prioritize companies that can credibly reach M&A, IPO, or structured secondary outcomes. In this cycle, realized returns are re-emerging as the primary measure of performance, not just valuation growth.

5. Operating through volatility is now a core competency

Global trade tensions and tariffs, alongside regulatory shifts, currency swings, and uneven capital flows, have become defining features of the operating environment across emerging markets. As this year progresses, we believe investors will underwrite not just a company’s growth potential, but also its ability to execute amid instability.

What will this look like? Rather than viewing policy changes, geopolitical shocks, or foreign exchange volatility as isolated external risks, investors will evaluate how startups are identifying opportunities in this “new normal” to build resilient and successful businesses.

For micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that depend on imported inputs or cross-border trade, these pressures reshape pricing, working capital needs, and margin dynamics, often making them significantly more price-sensitive. The platforms that serve these businesses will stand out by helping MSMEs diversify supply chains, manage costs, and adapt to shifting macro and regulatory environments. In turn, the MSMEs best positioned to remain competitive will be those with more flexible pricing and operating models, supported by platforms that enable faster adjustment and broader market access.

We believe this resilience is especially visible in operating platforms where financial services are embedded directly into workflows. For example, in the agriculture sector, platforms like AquaExchange not only integrate financing, payments, and data into aquaculture supply chains — serving fish and shrimp farmers, feed suppliers, and other small and mid-sized producers who rely on efficient input management and predictable cash flow — but also provide cutting-edge technology to improve crop yield. As input costs rise and tariffs compress margins, these pressures are also creating incentives for producers to become more efficient and increase productivity to stay competitive. In this environment, embedded finance is not just a growth lever, but increasingly functions as risk infrastructure that helps producers manage liquidity, optimize operations, and adapt to changing market conditions.

6. Private credit will be core infrastructure for fintech scale

Fintech growth cannot be powered by equity alone. As concessional capital and development finance guarantees play a smaller role, private credit markets, including venture debt, structured facilities, and institutional lending, will be foundational for fintechs, particularly lenders, to scale.

This marks a shift in how growth is financed, particularly in emerging markets, and one we expect to continue in the future. Investors increasingly recognize that for digital lenders, the constraint is not product demand but access to reliable, appropriately structured debt. Loan books are capital-intensive by design, and without durable credit lines, even strong underwriting and distribution advantages cannot translate into sustainable growth.

This challenge is especially pronounced among MSME-focused lenders across sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia, where balance sheet growth depends on building relationships with private credit providers. As a result, a fintech’s ability to attract and manage debt capital, from structuring facilities to meeting reporting standards and maintaining asset quality through cycles, is becoming as important as customer acquisition or technology.

We believe the fintechs that will stand out will be those designed from the outset to operate within institutional credit markets, not just venture funding cycles. 

7. The seed-to-Series A pathway has shifted

The bar for raising Series A has moved materially. Where companies once needed roughly $1 million in annual recurring revenue, investors now expect $3 to 5 million. Of startups that raised a seed round in early 2022, just 15.5 percent were able to raise a Series A within the two years following.

This is more than a numbers game. Post-seed round execution has become critical: go-to-market strategy, unit economics, and operational discipline now determine whether a company can hit the higher milestones investors demand. Capital is still available, but expectations are sharper, and in this environment, the companies that thrive are those that create growth plans and manage their runway in a disciplined way. A few areas we advise our startups at the seed stage:

• Prioritize revenue quality over pure growth: Investors want predictable recurring revenue and strong retention, not vanity spikes, when assessing Series A readiness.
• Prove repeatable unit economics: Show a clear path from customer acquisition costs (CAC) to durable lifetime value (LTV) and steady efficiency gains to demonstrate real scalability.
• Start fundraising earlier than you think: With longer cycles and tougher Series A markets, begin preparing months before major milestones so you are not raising against a shrinking runway.

For investors with strong sector specialization like us, this shift reinforces the value of hands-on engagement. Evaluating applied and agentic AI, among other emerging technologies that work to improve companies’ balance sheets and unit economics, now requires closer collaboration with founders on product design, data governance, and regulatory alignment to ensure these tools strengthen revenue models while improving efficiency and expanding access.

Looking ahead

We believe 2026 will reward deliberate execution over experimentation. This year, investors are laser-focused on realized returns, while founders face longer fundraising cycles and higher performance bars. Across markets, the real opportunities lie in infrastructure, AI, and business models designed to thrive through volatility, not around it.

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