There's a classic scene in Batman — not the 2019 Joker, the original 1989 one, with Jack Nicholson. He walks into a museum, throws money into the air, and the crowd tramples itself trying to grab it. Meanwhile, he laughs.

Every time a major financial media outlet opens applications for a "best companies" list, I think of that scene.

CNBC just opened submissions for the fourth edition of the World's Top Fintech Companies 2026, produced in partnership with Statista. And look — I'm not saying it's a scam. Far from it. I'm saying it's worth paying attention to what this list reveals about where the industry actually stands, beyond the obvious.

The Circus Has Infrastructure

The list includes everything from startups to giants like Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa. Last year, first-time entries included Bilt (the rent rewards company), TerraPay (payments), and Entsia (insurance). Real companies, real products. Fair enough.

This year's new wrinkle is that RegTech — companies that help others navigate financial regulatory requirements — gets its own category. That detail is not trivial.

RegTech growing enough to earn its own seat at this table means one thing: compliance has become a billion-dollar business. The regulatory cost burden in global finance is so absurd that an entire ecosystem of companies has emerged just to feed off it. A paradox? Somewhat. An opportunity? Hell yes.

The Numbers Nobody Puts in the Headline

The latest KPMG report says the global fintech market raised $44.7 billion in investment in the first half of 2025, across more than 2,200 deals.

Sounds like a lot? Depends on your angle.

The previous half saw $54.2 billion. That's a drop of nearly 18% in six months. This isn't a footnote. It's a signal.

The sector has left its turbulent adolescence — when anything with "app" and "financial" in the pitch deck could land a check — and entered a more selective maturity phase. Easy money walked out the door along with low interest rates. What's left has to prove there's a real business behind it, not just a pretty narrative for a PowerPoint slide.

Taleb would call this antifragility being tested. The fragile ones broke. The survivors came out stronger.

Covid Did the Dirty Work

There's a historical credit here that needs to be acknowledged: the pandemic accelerated financial digitization in a way that would have taken a decade to happen organically. People who had never opened a banking app in their lives were forced to learn. The elderly, small business owners, informal workers — everyone got pulled into the digital system at once.

Then AI showed up to pour gasoline on the fire.

The problem is that "AI in fintech" has become the new "blockchain will fix everything" from 2017-2018. Everyone throwing the term into the pitch, few actually delivering something that changes anyone's life. The suits-and-ties analysts love this narrative. It looks great in the quarterly report.

Skin in the Game: Who Actually Has It?

Here's my provocation.

When CNBC lists the "world's best fintechs," it's listing companies that applied to be there. You read that right — it's a list of voluntary candidates, evaluated based on revenue growth and headcount, among other indicators.

I'm not saying the criteria are bad. I'm saying that any list relying on self-reporting carries an obvious bias: the best at marketing show up right alongside the best at results.

Buffett never needed to apply to any list. Kovner never emailed Statista. The great traders Schwager interviewed in Market Wizards got rich in silence, no PR team required.

The CNBC list has its uses — it maps who's active, who's growing, who's positioning themselves in the market. But mistaking presence on that list for genuine excellence is exactly the kind of mistake the amateur investor makes and the seasoned professional never does.

The submission deadline is April 24, 2026. Interested companies submit their data through Statista's form.

And you, reading this right now: when was the last time you looked at the companies in your portfolio with the same healthy skepticism I'm applying here?

The trophy doesn't pay dividends.