Look, if there's one thing the financial market loves more than money, it's a nice little list to hang on the office wall.
CNBC, in partnership with Statista (that German research firm that lives and breathes rankings of everything), has opened applications for the fourth edition of the World's Top Fintech Companies 2026. In plain English: it's that annual ranking where fintechs from all over the world — from garage startups to giants like Mastercard, Visa, and Stripe — compete for a little stamp of "approved by the mainstream media."
Applications are open until April 24, 2026. Companies need to fill out a form on Statista's platform with data on their business model, revenue growth, headcount — the bread and butter of corporate validation.
What changed this edition
This year's novelty is the inclusion of a dedicated category for regulation tech (regtech) — companies that help others meet their financial regulatory obligations. That alone says a lot about where the sector is right now. When the fintech ecosystem starts creating subcategories just to deal with the red tape it faces itself, you know the kid has grown up. It's like that neighborhood rebel who now wears a suit and pays an accountant.
And it makes sense. The fintech sector stopped being that cute little "challenger" promising to "disrupt the banks" and became a structural part of the global financial system. The pandemic accelerated digitization like nitrous in an old engine, and now artificial intelligence threw more gasoline on the fire.
The numbers behind the hype
According to KPMG's most recent report, the global fintech market attracted $44.7 billion in investments spread across more than 2,200 deals in the first half of 2025. Sounds like a lot? It is. But it's less than the $54.2 billion from the previous six months.
Damn, pay attention to that detail. Because the narrative the mainstream media is going to sell you is "billions flowing into fintechs!" — and that's true. But the deceleration trend is right there, staring you in the face through the numbers, for anyone willing to see. The money didn't dry up, but the wide-open firehose of 2021-2022, that carnival of SPACs and inflated valuations, is long gone.
Last year's list featured heavy hitters like Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa side by side with newer scaleups — Bilt (credit rewards), TerraPay (payments), and Entsia (insurance) debuted on the ranking. It's the old formula: mix giants with newcomers to give the list credibility and give the smaller guys some oxygen.
The question nobody asks
Now, let me be the buzzkill at the party for a second.
What exactly are these rankings good for? If you're an investor — the kind who actually puts real money on the table, not the kind who just likes LinkedIn posts — a list like this gives you zero edge. Zero. Zilch. It's the financial equivalent of getting a participation trophy at the school soccer tournament.
Nassim Taleb would say the people making the list have no skin in the game. CNBC isn't betting on Bilt or TerraPay. Statista won't lose a single penny if half these companies go under in two years. And, believe me, some will.
That doesn't mean the information is useless. It means it's incomplete. It's a starting point, not a conclusion. And the danger lives right there: in the guy who sees the "CNBC Top Fintech" seal and thinks he's done his due diligence.
Why this actually matters
If you work in the sector or invest in fintechs, it's worth keeping an eye on the names that show up when the list drops. Not for the seal itself, but for the market mapping. Which segments are growing? Where is institutional money going? The inclusion of regtech as its own category is a clear signal: compliance and regulation have become a billion-dollar market within a billion-dollar market.
And what about Brazil? Well, we've got Pix, we've got Nubank listed on the American stock exchange, we've got a fintech ecosystem that's a benchmark in Latin America. But when it comes to the gringo rankings, where's the representation? That's a conversation for another day — and it's going to be an uncomfortable one.
In the meantime, applications are open. If you have a fintech and want that CNBC seal on your deck for the next investor pitch, go for it: topfintechs@statista.com.
Just don't confuse media validation with market validation. They're very, very different things.
