Market Research for FinTech Companies Scaling Across Borders and Regulatory Regimes

SIS interviews payments executives, neobank product managers, blockchain founders, institutional investors, and regulatory affairs officers about how FinTech products gain adoption, where they stall, and what regulatory requirements shape the go-to-market timeline. Research covers digital payments, lending platforms, neobanking, insurtech, wealthtech, and blockchain infrastructure.

FinTech Market Research and Strategy Consulting

Digital Payments and Open Banking

SIS interviews payments executives, API product managers, and banking-as-a-service providers about real-time payment rail adoption, account-to-account transfer growth, and embedded finance partnership structures. Research covers PSD2/PSD3 implementation in Europe, open banking API adoption rates by market, and the competitive dynamics between traditional card networks, digital wallets, and account-to-account payment providers. Cross-border remittance research maps corridor economics, FX margin structures, and compliance requirements by route.

Regulatory Licensing and Compliance Intelligence

SIS tracks the regulatory requirements that determine whether a FinTech can launch, operate, and scale in a given market. Coverage includes EMD2 e-money licensing in the EU, FCA authorization in the UK, state money transmitter licensing in the US, MAS licensing in Singapore, and central bank sandbox programs in emerging markets. SIS interviews compliance officers and regulatory affairs directors to understand processing timelines, capital requirements, and where regulatory interpretation varies between jurisdictions.

Neobanking and Digital Lending

SIS interviews neobank product managers, digital lending officers, and early-stage customers to assess product-market fit, acquisition channel effectiveness, and feature adoption patterns. Research covers onboarding conversion rates (and where users abandon), deposit growth trajectories, credit risk model performance versus projections, and unit economics at different scale thresholds. For investors, SIS benchmarks neobank operating metrics against category averages and identifies where management projections diverge from field data.

Blockchain and Digital Assets

SIS’s Blockchain practice, led by Michael Stanat since 2019, covers institutional adoption of digital asset custody, stablecoin settlement infrastructure, tokenized securities, and enterprise blockchain integration. Research interviews institutional investors, exchange operators, and compliance teams about custody solutions, regulatory classification of digital assets, and the impact of MiCA (EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) on product design and market access. SIS separates projects with institutional traction from those that remain in announcement stage.

FinTech Market Entry and Expansion

SIS conducts market entry research for FinTech companies expanding into new geographies. Research covers local financial behaviors and trust signals (which vary dramatically between markets), regulatory licensing timelines, competitive positioning of incumbents and other entrants, and partnership structures with local banks and payment processors. SIS has assessed FinTech market entry in Southeast Asian mobile payments, Latin American neobanking, European open banking ecosystems, and Gulf state digital banking under new central bank licensing frameworks.

FinTech Product Usability Testing

SIS runs usability studies on payment apps, lending platforms, trading interfaces, and banking onboarding flows at our Flatiron District facility and online. Research measures task completion rates, error recovery patterns, security perception thresholds, and the specific steps where users abandon the process. For a digital lending platform, SIS identified that income verification required users to upload documents in a format 40% of applicants could not produce, accounting for the majority of mid-funnel abandonment.

SIS International – FinTech Strategy & Market Intelligence

ENGAGEMENT 01 // PRODUCT

USABILITY AND ONBOARDING RESEARCH

Test the Product with Real Users Before You Scale Acquisition Spend

SIS runs usability studies on payment apps, neobanking platforms, lending flows, and trading interfaces at our Flatiron District facility and online. Research measures task completion rates, error recovery, security perception thresholds, and the specific steps where users abandon the process. For a digital lending platform, SIS identified that the income verification step required documents in a format 40% of applicants could not produce, accounting for the majority of mid-funnel abandonment. For a neobank, identity verification took three times longer than the competitor benchmark. These are the findings that change product roadmaps before CAC budgets are wasted.

ENGAGEMENT 02 // EXPANSION

MARKET ENTRY AND COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

Enter New Markets with Local Data on Banking Behavior and Licensing Timelines

SIS interviews local banking executives, payments operators, and regulatory officers to assess market readiness before a FinTech commits resources. Research covers local financial behaviors and trust signals (which vary dramatically between markets), regulatory licensing timelines and capital requirements, competitive positioning of incumbents and other entrants, and partnership structures with local banks. SIS has conducted FinTech market entry research in Southeast Asian mobile payments, Latin American neobanking, European open banking under PSD2/PSD3, and Gulf state digital banking under new central bank licensing frameworks.

ENGAGEMENT 03 // BLOCKCHAIN

DIGITAL ASSETS AND INSTITUTIONAL ADOPTION

Separate Institutional Traction from Announcement-Stage Projects

SIS’s Blockchain practice interviews institutional investors, digital asset custody providers, exchange operators, and compliance teams about which blockchain infrastructure is gaining real enterprise adoption and which remains speculative. Research covers stablecoin settlement infrastructure, tokenized securities issuance, enterprise DLT integration, and the regulatory impact of MiCA (EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) on product design and market access. SIS tracks the gap between announced partnerships and deployed production systems.

WHAT YOU RECEIVE

FinTech Research from Primary Sources

SIS does not repackage FinTech industry reports or analyst estimates. Every finding comes from interviews with the operators running FinTech products, the enterprise customers evaluating them, and the regulators licensing them in the specific markets the client is targeting.

Onboarding and Conversion Diagnostic with Drop-Off Analysis

Usability findings from recruited user sessions showing the exact step where onboarding breaks: identity verification, document upload, funding source linkage, or first-transaction completion. Each drop-off point is quantified by abandonment rate and annotated with the user expectation that was violated. Product and growth teams use this to fix the highest-impact conversion failures before scaling acquisition spend.

Market Entry Assessment with Regulatory Licensing Roadmap

Country-specific analysis built from interviews with local banking executives and regulatory officers. Findings cover licensing requirements and processing timelines (EMD2 in the EU, FCA authorization in the UK, state money transmitter licensing in the US, MAS in Singapore), local competitive dynamics, customer acquisition cost benchmarks, and the trust signals that drive adoption in each market. FinTech founders and expansion teams use this to sequence market entry by regulatory feasibility and commercial opportunity.

Competitive Intelligence on Named FinTech Rivals

Ongoing monitoring of named competitors through funding round disclosures, patent activity, API documentation changes, pricing page updates, and structured interviews with enterprise customers and channel partners. Quarterly briefings track product launches, pricing model changes, partnership announcements, and market share shifts. Findings distinguish between what competitors announce publicly and what their customers and partners report from the field.

Digital Asset Market Sizing and Institutional Adoption Assessment

Bottom-up market sizing for specific blockchain infrastructure categories (custody, settlement, tokenized issuance) built from interviews with institutional adopters. Research maps which institutions have deployed production systems versus which are in evaluation or pilot stage. Regulatory analysis covers MiCA compliance timelines, SEC enforcement patterns, and jurisdictional arbitrage dynamics. The output separates real institutional traction from vendor marketing and conference announcements.

THE SIS DIFFERENCE

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