Who really holds Europe's fintech licences
We rebuilt the official EBA and ESMA registers into one filterable index: 1,828 licensed fintech entities across the EEA (2,563 including the UK). The raw, register-sourced data tells a story most industry commentary misses — about Lithuania, about passporting, and about how much of "European" fintech is licensed Silicon Valley.
By Mikolaj Slezak · Published , updated
The map: 1,828 licensed entities, four licence types
Counting only full authorisations (no agents, no exemptions), the EEA's fintech licence landscape looks like this: 998 payment institutions (PI), 422 e-money institutions (EMI), 279 MiCA crypto-asset service providers (CASP) and 129 registered AISPs — sourced from the EBA PSD2 and ESMA MiCA registers, refreshed 2026-07-14. You can filter all of them by licence type, country, regulator and service on our European Fintech Index. (The CASP count keeps climbing as MiCA authorisations roll out — it was 244 a fortnight earlier.)
The index also covers the UK
We also merge the FCA Financial Services Register: 735 UK firms (263 authorised EMIs, 384 authorised payment institutions, 88 registered AISPs), taking the index to 2,563 licensed entities across the EEA and the UK. One number worth pausing on: the UK alone hosts 263 authorised EMIs — more than any single EEA state, including Lithuania (94). The catch is the post-Brexit asterisk: none of those licences passport into the EEA. A UK EMI serving European customers needs a second, EEA licence — which is exactly why so many UK fintechs in our catalogue (Paysafe, TrueLayer, PPRO, Currencies Direct…) show a second register entry in Ireland, Malta, Cyprus or Lithuania. The EEA analysis below refers to the 1,828 EEA entities.
Lithuania is Europe's e-money capital — by a landslide
Lithuania hosts 94 of the 422 EMIs — more than Germany (13) and France (28) combined, twice over. Counting all licence types, Lithuania (158 entities) still leads, now just ahead of France (156) and Germany (153), despite having roughly 3% of their combined population. That is the visible result of the Bank of Lithuania's deliberate post-2016 licensing strategy — and it is why so many "German" or "French" fintech products actually run on Lithuanian IBANs and e-money licences.
Different licences cluster in different places
- Payment institutions follow big home markets: Netherlands (92), France (87), Germany (83), Sweden (76), Spain (75).
- E-money institutions follow licensing hubs: Lithuania (94), Malta (43), Cyprus (32), Ireland (30).
- MiCA CASPs cluster in Germany (57) — ahead of France (30) and the Netherlands (28) — with Malta (22) and Cyprus (20) as the fast-growing offshore-style challengers.
The pattern matters for buyers: where your provider is licensed determines its supervisor, its passporting base and — often — the IBAN country code your customers will see (the "IBAN discrimination" problem).
The passporting illusion
The single market promises one licence for thirty EEA states. The register shows how selectively that promise is used: about 39% of all licensed entities (715 of 1,828) never passport beyond their home state. For payment institutions it is 46%. Only 639 entities (35%) passport into essentially the whole EEA (29+ states). E-money institutions are the most genuinely pan-European breed — 69% passport into ten or more states, which is exactly why EMIs are the workhorse licence of European fintech infrastructure.
Silicon Valley already holds European licences
A European licence is not the same thing as European sovereignty. The registers include Google (an Irish payment institution and a Lithuanian EMI), Amazon (Luxembourg EMI), Meta/Facebook (Irish EMI), Stripe (Irish EMI), Coinbase (Luxembourg MiCA CASP + EMI), plus Uber, Airbnb, eBay, Etsy and Booking — and PayPal operates through a full Luxembourg bank. All perfectly licensed; all ultimately governed by US parents subject to the US CLOUD Act.
That is why Fintechnologica never treats "EU-licensed" as the end of the analysis: origin, ownership/control and data residency are separate flags on every profile, shown next to the licence — so a buyer can see that a provider is EEA-supervised and who ultimately controls it.
Licensed is not the same as vetted
One honest caveat, straight from the source: ESMA itself notes its interim register "has no legal significance" — always confirm at the home regulator. And a licence tells you an entity may operate, not that it is a good infrastructure partner (the register still lists entities in liquidation, and history is full of licensed failures — Wirecard held licences too). That is the gap between the two tiers on Fintechnologica: 2,563 register-sourced entities (EEA + UK), of which 303 are cross-linked to hand-verified profiles with licence references, sovereignty analysis, ownership flags and risk notes. The register gives you breadth; verification gives you depth.
Sources
- EBA PSD2 register — payment institutions, e-money institutions and AISPs (bulk golden copy, as of 2026-07-14).
- ESMA interim MiCA register — crypto-asset service providers (as of 2026-07-14).
- FCA Financial Services Register — UK EMIs, PIs and RAISPs (as of 2026-07-14).
- Fintechnologica European Fintech Index — the rebuilt, filterable dataset behind every number in this analysis.
More insights
Source-verified coverage of 21 IBAN country codes - the UK leads with 17, Lithuania 9; Poland, Austria and Portugal have zero dedicated issuers. Only 15 verified IBAN sponsors document SEPA Direct Debit, where IBAN discrimination actually bites.
The card scheme is American, but the card body, chip and personalisation are made in Europe - IDEMIA, Giesecke+Devrient, Thales, Austriacard, Paragon ID. A rare layer where Europe leads.
Regulated euro stablecoins under MiCA (EURCV, EUROe, EURe, EURQ, EURR, EUROP, EURI) as a European, EEA-supervised alternative to US-controlled USDC and USDT. Verified at source.