Financial services consolidate in waves, and fintech funding moves in booms and busts. The US had ~14,000 commercial banks in the mid-1980s and has ~4,400 insured institutions today; most of the decline came through mergers after interstate banking was legalised in 1994, and the 2025–26 approval regime has set off the busiest bank-deal market since 2021. Fintech venture funding rose from a few billion dollars a year in the early 2010s to ~$140 billion in 2021, collapsed by roughly two-thirds by 2023–24 and recovered to ~$52 billion in 2025. The exits that followed tell the same story in valuations: Chime listed in 2025 at less than half its 2021 private price, Klarna at about a third, while Stripe, Robinhood and Coinbase came through the reset more valuable than ever. In between sit the strategic deals that remade the industry's plumbing (Fiserv–First Data, FIS–Worldpay and its unwinding, LSEG–Refinitiv, Capital One–Discover), the deals regulators stopped (Visa–Plaid), and private-equity roll-ups of insurance brokers, wealth managers and payments processors. This section explains how fintech is financed and valued, how exits happen, the mechanics of bank mergers (tangible book dilution, earnback, fair-value marks and approvals), the main waves of financial-infrastructure M&A, PE roll-ups in financial services, and how an experienced investor or corporate-development executive reads a deal. The frame is the US market, with brief comparisons to Europe and Africa. Venture and buyout mechanics in general are covered in the separate VC and PE knowledge bases, linked throughout.
What the study covers
- 1Overview: three capital markets and one consolidation machine
- 2Fintech funding cycles
- 3How investors value financial companies
- 4Exit routes
- 5Bank M&A
- 6Consolidation of financial infrastructure
- 7Private equity and roll-ups in financial services
- 8Buying a charter
- 9Key numbers
- 10Landmark deals and cases
- 11Pitfalls
- 12How an expert thinks about it
- 13Glossary