Glossary
FinTech
FinTech (financial technology) is software and other technology that delivers or improves financial services such as payments, lending, banking, treasury, and wealth management. The term also covers the companies that build it, from payment and banking apps to software sold to banks. In B2B sales development, “FinTech” is a target vertical made up of software vendors, infrastructure providers, and tech-enabled financial institutions that buy tools and services to power digital, automated finance operations across businesses.
FinTech is the software, data and infrastructure that delivers or improves financial services, plus the companies that build it.
Financial services is the wider industry of banks, credit unions, insurers, lenders, investment firms and payment companies.
A FinTech company may partner with banks, hold its own licenses or sell software to financial institutions.
In sales development, FinTech is a target vertical you segment by sub-vertical, revenue model and regulatory footprint.
What FinTech means in practice
FinTech, short for financial technology, is software and other technology used to deliver, improve or automate financial services such as payments, banking, lending, investing and insurance. The word describes both the technology and the companies that build it. If you have paid by card on a website, linked a bank account to an app or opened an account without visiting a branch, you have used FinTech.
The Financial Stability Board, an international body that monitors the global financial system, defines FinTech more formally as “technologically enabled innovation in financial services” that can lead to new business models, applications, processes or products with a material effect on financial markets and services.
Examples of FinTech
These real companies show several common kinds of FinTech product. Each description is based on the company’s own website.
- Online and in-person payments. Stripe lets businesses accept payments online, in person and around the world.
- Connecting bank accounts to apps. Plaid connects apps to people’s bank accounts, with the account holder in control of access, so an app can verify an account, check a balance or move money.
- Paying bills and getting paid. BILL helps small and midsize businesses automate accounts payable and accounts receivable.
- Corporate cards and spend management. Ramp offers corporate cards, spend management and accounts payable software for businesses.
- Automated investing. Betterment builds and manages a diversified investment portfolio for each customer.
- Software for banks. Q2 sells digital banking software that banks and credit unions offer to their consumer, small business and commercial customers.
FinTech vs. financial services
Financial services is the broader industry: banks, credit unions, insurers, lenders, investment firms and payment companies that hold, move, lend, invest or insure money. FinTech is a technology category that runs through that industry, not a separate industry beside it. It usually shows up in one of three ways:
- Technology companies offering financial products. These firms often work with partner banks or hold their own licenses. Ramp, for example, describes itself as a financial technology company, not a bank. Its US cards are issued by partner banks such as Celtic Bank, and its UK cards by an electronic money institution authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority.
- Technology vendors selling to financial institutions. Q2’s digital banking platform for banks and credit unions is one example.
- Established institutions building their own technology. Banks, insurers and investment firms build their own apps and digital tools and partner with FinTech companies, so one bank can be a FinTech buyer, builder and partner at the same time.
In short, “FinTech” describes how a financial product is built and delivered. It does not tell you whether a company is a bank or which rules apply to it. US bank regulators such as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency follow bank-fintech arrangements as part of their supervision work.
What FinTech means in B2B sales development
In B2B sales development, sellers treat FinTech as both a target market and a buying center: it includes software companies, platforms, and tech-enabled financial institutions that use technology to deliver or streamline financial services. These range from B2B payments and cash-management platforms to embedded finance, regtech, lending-as-a-service, and API-based banking infrastructure. When sales teams say they’re “selling into FinTech,” they mean targeting this ecosystem of high-growth, digitally native financial innovators.
FinTech matters to B2B sales development because it sits at the core of how businesses move money, manage cash flow, and comply with regulation. FinTech companies also buy a wide range of products themselves, from cloud infrastructure and fraud and identity tools to compliance software, analytics and sales services, which is why many B2B vendors treat FinTech as its own target market.
Modern sales organizations treat FinTech as a data-driven, sub-segmented vertical rather than a monolith. For list-building, that means using firmographic (size, region), technographic (payment rails, core banking system), and financial signals (funding rounds, partnerships, licenses) to identify the best-fit accounts and buyer personas, typically CFOs, heads of finance, payments leaders, risk/compliance, and operations executives. Because a payments processor, a lending platform and a bank software vendor have very different problems, precise targeting and differentiated messaging matter more than a single FinTech industry filter.
FinTech’s evolution also changes how SDR teams operate. Early FinTech revolutions focused on disrupting consumer banking and payments; today, much of the innovation is in B2B payments, embedded finance, and back-office automation. As a result, outbound teams must understand complex, multi-stakeholder buying committees and long sales cycles, while still moving quickly enough to capture momentum at high-growth firms. Effective FinTech sales development pairs high-quality, continuously refreshed prospect lists with domain-specific messaging about risk reduction, revenue enablement, and operational efficiency.
For list-building specifically, FinTech is one of the most dynamic verticals: new startups emerge, consolidate, or pivot frequently, funding events change priorities overnight, and regulatory shifts create new solution categories. Successful teams therefore invest heavily in enriched data, research processes, and specialized SDR expertise to stay on top of who the FinTech players are, what they do, and when they are most likely to buy.
A worked B2B example
Illustrative example. The companies and details are invented to show how the pieces fit together.
- Product. A vendor sells payment reconciliation software that automatically matches incoming bank transfers to open invoices.
- Customer. A 250-person FinTech company runs a B2B payments platform that collects invoice payments for mid-size distributors.
- Use case. The customer’s finance operations team matches thousands of transfers by hand each month, which delays month-end close and leads to support tickets about payments still marked unpaid.
- Buying roles. The CFO or VP Finance owns the budget. The Controller or Head of Finance Operations feels the pain and usually champions the project. A payments engineering lead checks how the software connects to bank data and the ledger. Risk, compliance and security review data access and the audit trail. Procurement runs the security questionnaire and contract. Real buying groups vary by company and deal size.
For list building, that example turns into clear criteria: B2B payments or invoicing platforms of a set size; contacts in finance leadership, finance operations, payments engineering and risk; and triggers such as a new payout product or open finance operations roles. A contact who cannot plausibly own or influence reconciliation does not belong on the list.
The upside of getting FinTech right
What teams gain when this is run well as part of a disciplined outbound motion.
Technology Sits at the Core of the Business
FinTech companies build their products on software, data and partner infrastructure, so technology and operations spending sits close to the core of the business. This makes them attractive targets for B2B vendors selling infrastructure, security, analytics, or enablement tools designed to support digital finance operations.
Rich Data Signals for Precise List-Building
Because many FinTech firms raise outside funding and handle regulated activities, they often leave a strong digital footprint: funding rounds, licenses, product launches, and partnership announcements. These signals can be used to build highly segmented prospect lists based on funding stage, product type, regulatory geography, and technology stack.
Clear, Repeatable Use Cases Across Sub-Verticals
FinTech sub-verticals (payments, lending, regtech, insurtech, wealthtech) share common challenges such as onboarding, KYC/AML, fraud, and reconciliation. Once your team validates messaging and list criteria in one sub-vertical, you can systematically replicate that motion into adjacent segments with similar pain profiles.
Alignment With Digital-First Buying Behavior
FinTech buyers are inherently digital and comfortable evaluating vendors through online research, demos, and remote interactions. This aligns well with SDR-driven outbound, where targeted lists and digital outreach (email, social, calls) can efficiently start conversations without heavy reliance on field sales.
Strong Cross-Sell and Expansion Potential
Many FinTechs run multi-product roadmaps and expand quickly into new regions and segments. Once your SDR team lands an initial product with a FinTech account, the same buying committee often drives additional projects, making high-quality contact and account data extremely valuable for expansion plays.
How to do it well
Practical guidance from the team that runs outbound campaigns every day.
Segment FinTech by Sub-Vertical and Revenue Model
Group accounts into clear clusters such as B2B payments, embedded finance platforms, regtech, and SME lending, then segment further by revenue model (SaaS, transaction-based, marketplace). Build separate lists and messaging for each segment so SDRs can speak to specific workflows, KPIs, and regulatory concerns.
Layer Firmographic, Technographic, and Funding Signals
Go beyond simple industry filters by combining company size, region, and tech stack (e.g., card networks, core banking systems, cloud provider) with funding events and partnerships. This creates richer lists that prioritize FinTechs likely to have budget, integration fit, and urgency for your solution.
Continuously Refresh Contacts and Roles
FinTech organizations re-org frequently, especially after fundraising or M&A. Set a cadence (e.g., quarterly) to re-verify key roles like CFO, VP Finance, Head of Payments, and Product leaders, and to replace bounced emails or disconnected numbers before they burn SDR time in sequences.
Align List Criteria With Sales Plays and Use Cases
Define each outbound play (e.g., "improve B2B payments reconciliation" or "automate compliance reporting") and then back into the ideal account profile and personas. Ensure your list-building rules strictly match that profile so every contact in a sequence can plausibly own or influence the specific problem you solve.
Use Trigger Events to Prioritize Outreach
Track FinTech-specific triggers such as new funding rounds, license approvals, product launches, or large partnership announcements. Prioritize accounts that have recently experienced one of these events, and tag them in your CRM so SDRs can personalize openers around timely context.
Centralize Data in Your CRM and Enforce Governance
Push all FinTech account and contact data into a single CRM with standardized fields for segment, sub-vertical, and buying center. Enforce data entry rules and ownership so SDRs, AEs, and RevOps work from one clean system of record, preventing duplicate outreach and misaligned territory coverage.
Want this running in your pipeline instead of on your reading list?
Book a strategy callExpert tips on FinTech
What our strategists and SDR coaches tell teams working on this right now.
Define FinTech Sub-Verticals Before Building Any Lists
Don't start with generic "FinTech" filters. First, agree internally on specific sub-verticals (e.g., payment gateways vs. treasury platforms) and map them to your best-performing customer profiles. Use that taxonomy in your CRM and data tools so every list you generate aligns with a clear play.
Anchor Research on the Money Movement Flow
When researching FinTech accounts, map how money flows through their platform: who sends, who receives, and where risk sits. This quickly reveals which teams (finance, product, risk, operations) are most affected by your solution and should be prioritized on your contact lists.
Use Funding and Licensing Events as Time-Bound Triggers
Monitor news about funding rounds, regulatory approvals, and market launches, then fast-track those accounts into high-priority sequences. These events often come before new hiring and infrastructure projects, which makes timing critical for SDR outreach.
Combine Automated Data with Human Verification
Leverage tools for broad FinTech discovery, but always have a research or SDR ops function manually verify titles, responsibilities, and email formats for your top-tier targets. A small investment in human QA can improve connect rates and reduce bounces and spam complaints.
Localize Lists to Regulatory Regions
Tag each FinTech account with the jurisdictions where they're licensed or actively operating, not just their HQ location. This allows you to run region-specific plays (e.g., U.S. vs. EU compliance) and avoid pitching solutions that aren't feasible under local regulations.
Common challenges and pitfalls
The traps that quietly erode results, and what to do instead.
Constantly Shifting Company Landscape
New FinTechs launch, merge, rebrand, and pivot regularly, which makes static lists go stale quickly. Without ongoing research and data hygiene, SDRs end up calling closed companies, outdated titles, or irrelevant product lines, wasting time and damaging credibility.
Complex, Multi-Stakeholder Buying Committees
FinTech deals often involve finance, risk, compliance, product, and engineering leaders. If your list-building process doesn't map all key stakeholders, SDRs may over-focus on a single champion and miss the influencers who actually control budget, security approvals, or integration decisions.
Regulatory and Geographic Nuance
FinTech buying criteria vary sharply by jurisdiction (e.g., U.S. vs. EU vs. APAC) due to licensing and data residency rules. Poorly segmented lists that ignore regulatory footprints or licensing status lead to irrelevant pitches and low response rates in regions where your offer cannot be deployed.
Ambiguous or Overlapping Categories
Many FinTech companies straddle categories, such as a payments company that also offers lending or a bank that operates a separate SaaS platform. If your data model is too simplistic, you may either disqualify viable targets or send non-specific messaging that fails to resonate with their actual business model.
Data Fragmentation Across Multiple Sources
Funding data, technology stack information, and decision-maker contacts often live in separate tools. When list-building isn't centralized, SDRs manually patch lists together, increasing errors, duplications, and gaps that slow outreach and skew performance metrics.
Put FinTech to work
SalesHive offers list building, cold calling, email outreach and SDR outsourcing. For a FinTech campaign, start by agreeing which sub-verticals you sell to, such as B2B payments, embedded finance or regtech, and which roles own the problem you solve. Your strategist owns the targeting and messaging built around those choices.
Managed plans include a dedicated strategist, US-based SDRs (with an offshore option), the SalesHive platform, with eMod personalization on phone and email plans, and prospect data, with month-to-month and annual options. Before launch, you meet the team, review the playbook and approve the messaging. You owe $0 until you approve everything for launch.
FinTech FAQs
What is FinTech, and what are some examples?
What is the difference between FinTech and financial services?
What does FinTech mean in the context of B2B sales development?
How is FinTech list-building different from generic B2B list-building?
Which job titles should SDRs target at FinTech companies?
How often should FinTech prospect lists be refreshed?
What data sources are best for finding FinTech prospects?
Can outsourcing SDRs work effectively for FinTech sales?
Related terms
Other concepts worth knowing in the same corner of outbound.