Strong value proposition drives M&A activity
'Deal flow is hybrid. Banks have absorbed the surface - apps, onboarding, payments, user experience - but the underlying ledger and core infrastructure typically still sit with specialists.' Photograph: Getty Images
What was once a fragmented ecosystem of niche disrupters is consolidating into a more mature, strategically aligned market.
“Having advised on fintech deals through this cycle, I’ve watched the sector mature from pure disruption to genuine infrastructure. Ireland now hosts a layered ecosystem, from global scale-ups to homegrown enterprise champions, and a deep base of regulated electric money institutions (EMI) and payment institutions,” says Laura Gilbride, deals partner, PwC Ireland.
An EMI is a regulated financial entity authorised to issue electronic money, facilitate digital payments and provide e-wallets or accounts but, unlike traditional banks, can’t take retail deposits or lend money.
Gilbride believes the Central Bank of Ireland’s authorisation regime is a real strategic asset post Brexit. And with Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa) instant payments – which transfer money in seconds across the EU – mandatory since October 2025, and the Digital Euro on the horizon, “Irish fintechs are well-positioned for the next wave,” she says.
Having started out as a niche disrupter to legacy banks, the sector has evolved considerably. It is not merely a growing area in itself: legacy banks have been quick to adopt its clothing, and its tools.
“The reality I see across deal flow is hybrid. Banks have absorbed the surface – apps, onboarding, payments, user experience – but the underlying ledger and core infrastructure typically still sit with specialists,” says Gilbride.
That said, Irish fintechs are increasingly central to enabling account-to-account payments.
“Ireland has produced genuine global category leaders across payments, enterprise software as a service for financial institutions, embedded finance and regtech. Several are now serving tier-one banks worldwide. The common thread in deals I’ve worked on is that the winners didn’t compete head-on with banks. They solved specific, painful problems, particularly around account-to-account payments and modern infrastructure.”
Consolidation is accelerating. Irish fintechs attracted $259.38 million in deals in 2025, up 9 per cent on the previous year, according to the Pulse of FinTech H2′25 – a biannual report published by KPMG.
The largest fintech deal in Ireland last year was $58.61 million raised by trade finance firm Teybridge Capital Europe. Other notable deals included $77 million raised across two deals by payment software company NomuPay, and $35 million raised by Dublin-based financing platform Wayflyer.
Globally, after three years of declining investment, the global fintech market turned a corner in 2025, attracting $116 billion in total investment, up from $95.5 billion in 2024.
As financial services is a highly regulated space, fintechs that build technology meeting stringent regulatory requirements while also streamlining processes are especially attractive M&A targets right now, as Katharine Byrne, head of deal advisory in BDO Ireland, points out.
Unlike other tech sectors, the need for compliant solutions in finance creates a strong value proposition for such effective, regulation-ready technology. “If you find a very good fintech business that’s meeting the regulatory requirements and accelerates processes and procedures, then it becomes very attractive,” says Byrne. “We’ve got a lot more emerging fintech as a result.”
While financial services have long been shaped by regulation, the current surge in AI is significantly disrupting the sector, fuelling a wave of new fintech entrants, particularly in payments, wealth management or “wealthtech”, and digital currency tracking, further intensifying the sector’s attractiveness.
The market’s fragmentation, added to by a fresh proliferation of AI-driven start-ups, is helping to drive consolidation, attracting two primary buyer types – large incumbent financial institutions seeking technology to modernise legacy systems and private-equity firms aiming to invest in, and scale, promising smaller players.
Ireland already has a strong track record in fintech entrepreneurship, Byrne points out, with Stripe being a prime example. That is helping to draw international private equity and venture capital into the market.
For US investors in particular, Ireland serves as a strategic gateway to the EU.
“Over the last year private equity is getting very excited about fintech as a place to deploy their capital. They can see smaller players they can scale internationally, and Ireland has always had a good depth of fintech entrepreneurs,” says Byrne. “They are also seeing that these fintech players understand the different regulatory environments and are able to adapt between a US and an EU model.”
