Money20/20 Europe 2025: How Fintech’s coming of age changes everything for marketers

Spending time in Amsterdam at Money20/20 Europe this year left me with the feeling that fintech is finally growing up. The headlines are still there: AI, embedded finance, bold partnerships, but the way companies are talking about them has changed. There’s more confidence, more clarity, and far less fluff.

For someone in my role, the value wasn’t just in what was announced, but how those announcements revealed where the industry is headed. This year’s show offered plenty to think about, especially around how we as marketers need to evolve alongside the products and platforms we’re helping to promote.

The AI shift: no longer hype, just how things work

It’s no surprise AI was a central theme – but what stood out was how little fanfare it received. David Sandstrom, Klarna’s CMO, said its use of AI “isn’t just technical, it’s cultural”. It shapes how they build, work and serve customers. Equally, Bunq talked about using it to reduce service wait times to mere seconds. These aren’t moonshot projects, they’re day-to-day applications. I kid you not, It seemed like nearly everyone had AI built into their core offering this year. 

That feels like the real signal: AI isn’t being treated like a shiny new toy anymore. It’s becoming invisible infrastructure. Something expected rather than celebrated. And that should influence how we, as marketers, talk about it. Less sci-fi, more utility; less “look what we’ve built,” more “look how we work.”

We’ve seen this ourselves in campaign work: AI is most powerful when it quietly enables better service, faster decision-making or more personal interactions. The brands that understand that and reflect it honestly are the ones people trust.

Fintech partnerships are (finally) becoming meaningful

There was a lot of talk this year about partnerships, but it wasn’t just lip service. Whether it was Deutsche Bank and Mastercard on merchant payments, Revolut joining the European Payments Initiative (EPI) to localise Wero (a digital wallet and instant account-to-account payments solution) in Europe, or Zilch (traditionally a BNPL company) announcing their first physical card with Visa, these weren’t surface-level integrations. They were signs of genuine, mutual value creation.

The old tension between fintechs and legacy institutions seems to be shifting. It’s no longer about disruption vs tradition. It’s about figuring out how to build something better together, with clear outcomes, complementary strengths, and shared goals.

That’s something I think marketing often misses. We tend to paint these partnerships as press-worthy moments, but the real challenge and opportunity is to show how they improve the product for the end user. That means deeper messaging work, not just logos on a slide.

Platforms are eating the fintech world

If there was one recurring idea throughout the event, it was the move from standalone fintech products to full-service platforms. Small or large businesses don’t want ten different tools; they want one ecosystem that “just works.”

You could feel this in how companies like Pipe, Stripe, and Mangopay talked about their value propositions. It’s no longer enough to solve one problem. The winners are solving ten, under one roof, with one login and one UX.

For marketers, that makes everything more complicated and more exciting. When the product becomes an ecosystem, the marketing has to become layered, too. You can’t just talk about features anymore. You need to map stories across multiple customer journeys, align brand with behaviour, and build messaging frameworks that adapt depending on the audience.

In that sense, platform thinking has to extend into campaign strategy. And agencies need to get better at helping clients navigate that complexity without overwhelming the customer.

Trust, fraud and the new role of empathy

One of the most powerful sessions of the week was with Alex Wood, a reformed fraudster, who laid out just how relentless bad actors can be and how broken the support systems are for victims. There was also a sobering discussion about child identity theft and how current systems are woefully unequipped to prevent or resolve it.

The uncomfortable truth is that every fraud incident doesn’t just cost money – it erodes the very foundation that fintech is built on: the belief that digital finance can be safer, not just faster, than traditional banking.

These conversations reminded me that fintech still has a trust problem. We talk a lot about onboarding and conversion, but we don’t talk enough about what happens when things go wrong. Fraud prevention, user protection, identity security. These aren’t backend concerns anymore, they’re front-of-house issues that shape perception, loyalty and brand value.

For those of us working in content, comms and strategy, that’s a shift we need to internalise. We have to balance optimism with realism. We can’t just talk about speed and scale. We need to talk about safety, clarity and accountability. That’s what real trust is built on.

Marketing’s role is changing. Are we ready?

Looking at the bigger picture, what struck me most this year was how fintech’s evolution is pulling marketing into a more central, strategic role. The industry’s entering an age of maturity, and with that comes new expectations. Users don’t want to be dazzled. They want to be understood. They want products that work, from companies that listen.

That means campaigns need to be more grounded. Messaging has to reflect complexity, without overwhelming. And creative execution needs to be connected to the product experience and not just shouting from the sidelines.

We’re not just telling stories anymore. We’re translating ideas. Making difficult things digestible. Helping companies express who they really are and why they matter.

That’s not a small shift. It’s a different way of operating. One where digital marketers aren’t an add-on but a genuine bridge between vision and reality.

A few thoughts I’m taking home

Money20/20 this year felt like a reset. Not in the sense of starting over, but in the sense of getting real. There’s a lot of noise in fintech, but also a lot of clarity emerging if you know where to look.

As I head back to client work, a few questions are sticking with me:

Are we being honest enough in our marketing?
Are we helping to simplify complexity or just adding to it?
And are we treating trust as a brand value or a product feature?

Because as fintech continues to evolve quietly, steadily, and with more purpose, it’s on us to evolve with it. Not just to reflect what’s happening, but to help shape what comes next.

These questions aren’t just philosophical – they’re the foundation of effective fintech marketing. At Archetype, we’ve been grappling with these challenges alongside our clients, helping them navigate this evolution. If you’re ready to build a marketing strategy that simplifies instead of complicates, we can help you achieve that, and that starts with a conversation.