Foundations for Successful Fintech Infrastructure (and Several Tradeoffs to Consider)

Description

Over the past several years, the field of fintech infrastructure has exploded with venture capital investment and entrepreneurial attention. Between the emergence of Stripe, Plaid, and other category-defining decacorns; the continued launches of financial services offerings from non-banks like Apple and Walmart; and the general API-ification of the average tech stack, there are many structural tailwinds propelling fintech infrastructure forward.

We see this firsthand on the fintech team at a16z. Every week, we have the privilege of meeting dozens of incredibly sharp founders who are tackling everything from domestic adjacencies to existing offerings (e.g., payroll connectivity or health insurance aggregation), to international versions of U.S. success stories (e.g., bank account aggregation or global know your customer (KYC) tools), to novel problem sets entirely (e.g., bridges between web2 and web3).