Major investments in European fintech continued at pace in 2025.
The €13bn raised last year across 662 dealcounts came close to matching the €14bn raised in 2024, according to Sifted data. But what’s next for the sector?
After a decade dominated by card-led neobanks, fintech is slowly entering a new phase: moving towards multi-rail stacks where fiat accounts, regulated crypto services and card rails — the underlying infrastructure moving money between banks, businesses and individuals — operate within a single system.
Fintech experts told Sifted what they expected to become a reality in their 2026 predictions for the sector, including a rollout of AI agents and a renewed emphasis on infrastructure. More and more businesses want finance tools that save time and money, and are moving away from using multiple different apps to do one job.
One fintech already making moves to introduce a combined integrated stack is Blackcat. Sifted asked chief technology officer Olegs Cernisevs about the company’s transformation and what it reveals about the future of Europe’s fintech stack.
Can you tell me about Blackcat and what the new service entails?
Blackcat, formerly known as Blackcatcard, is a European fintech brand offering everyday financial and crypto services within a single app. Users receive a free personal international bank account number (EUR IBAN), free transfers of euros within Europe (SEPA payments) and cards, alongside crypto functions, integrated through an open-banking technology, which allows them to buy, sell, store, send, and receive digital assets seamlessly.
Crypto services are provided via Blackcat’s licensed partner, MANERIO Sp. z o.o, ensuring compliance with applicable European regulatory frameworks. Blackcat acts as the product layer that unites these regulated partners into a single, coherent user experience which reduces friction between spending, holding and converting value when crypto is part of everyday financial life.
What drove the rebrand from Blackcatcard to Blackcat?
The transition from Blackcatcard to Blackcat wasn’t driven by a marketing exercise or a desire to reinvent the brand. In practice, our users had already made that choice for us and Blackcat was the name people remembered and used naturally.
Blackcat now brings together a personal EUR IBAN, SEPA transfers, card-to-card payments, multiple cards, competitive reward programmes, and an embedded crypto service all within a single ecosystem.
At the same time, the product itself had evolved far beyond a card-centric service. Blackcat now brings together a personal EUR IBAN, SEPA transfers, card-to-card payments, multiple cards, competitive reward programmes and an embedded crypto service all within a single ecosystem.
The vision behind the rebrand was therefore about alignment, bringing the name, the product architecture and the user experience in line with what Blackcat had already become, and what it is being built to support next.
You also launched a completely new app alongside the rebrand. What changed in the product architecture?
The rebrand also coincided with the launch of a completely new app, rebuilt around a modern, multi-wallet architecture. Instead of a single account with multiple features attached to it, Blackcat is structured as a unified wallet environment where users can create and manage multiple independent wallets.
Each wallet functions as a separate account — either in euros or in crypto — allowing users to organise their finances by purpose, use case or asset type. This structure makes it natural to treat wallets as financial “pockets”, rather than forcing all activity into a single balance.
Partner integrations, open-finance functionality and additional financial services can be embedded as native extensions of the wallet layer, rather than bolted-on features.
Can you explain the move from a card-first product to a full-scale European fintech platform?
Blackcat was among the pioneers in Europe to combine fiat and crypto within a single, coherent user experience. We believe that digital assets are not an exotic instrument for a small group of insiders, but a practical layer of everyday finance that would inevitably become part of how people move money across borders.
"Trust in crypto-enabled products is built through consistent user experience."
We made a conscious decision to work with a licensed crypto broker operating within a European jurisdiction, rather than relying on offshore or loosely regulated structures. In our view, trust in crypto-enabled products is built through consistent user experience, as well as the regulatory and operational context behind them.
In practice, crypto only delivers real value when it works seamlessly alongside fiat, meaning that users can receive funds, convert, spend or settle without switching mental models or products. Expanding beyond a card-only setup into a full European fintech platform was a deliberate design choice which was to make multi-rail finance feel natural, accessible and boringly reliable.
Can you tell me more about the academic-grade research on risk modelling and financial system behaviour that you publish? How did this research inform the transition to Blackcat?
Behind Blackcat, there is a team that includes several PhD holders who, alongside building and operating live financial products, are continuously engaged in applied academic research. This is something we are genuinely proud of and something we consciously protect as part of our culture.
This academic, systems-first approach pays off in practice. The regulated electronic money institution (EMI) partner behind Blackcat was among the early institutions in Europe to obtain direct access to SEPA infrastructure, rather than relying on intermediary banks.
"These insights are applicable across industries that operate complex, regulated, and high-risk systems."
The research behind Blackcat focuses on risk modelling, system behaviour and operational resilience, not only on how risks emerge in financial systems, but on how they propagate, scale and can be mitigated at an infrastructure level.
We actively share our approaches and conclusions with the wider market. While rooted in fintech, these insights are applicable across industries that operate complex, regulated and high-risk systems.
How is the combination of fiat and crypto reshaping both product design and compliance strategy?
We always believed crypto would only become truly useful when it stopped feeling like a separate, specialised product and instead worked naturally alongside fiat. That belief shaped our product design early on. Our goal was to make the experience intuitive and familiar, without forcing users to understand technical complexity.
This approach has direct consequences for compliance as well. We built crypto-related controls to the same standard as our well-established fiat infrastructure from the outset. That includes clear allocation of responsibilities between regulated entities, consistent monitoring across flows and unified risk logic rather than parallel systems.
Where do you think Europe’s fintech stack is heading? What is the next stage?
Multi-rail platforms will continue to emerge across Europe, but not because it is fashionable or because users are asking for more features. They will emerge because the traditional separation between payment rails no longer reflects how people actually use money.
"The next stage of European fintech is not about doing more things, but about doing the essential things better."
That said, not every platform that combines multiple rails will succeed. The challenge is not technical integration, but operational maturity. The next stage of European fintech is not about doing more things, but about doing the essential things better. Integration, convenience and resilience are converging and platforms that can deliver all three will define the next generation of financial services.
Blackcat is available on iOS and Android. More information at Blackcat.app
Disclaimer: Blackcat is a European fintech platform that combines everyday financial services — EUR IBAN accounts, SEPA transfers, cards, free internal account-to-account money transfers, cashback and bonuses — with integrated cryptocurrency functionality in a single multi-wallet application. Fiat services are powered by Papaya Ltd, an Electronic Money Institution authorised and regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority and a direct SEPA participant. Registration number C55146. Client funds are safeguarded in accordance with applicable legislation. Funds held in e-money accounts are not covered by the Depositor Compensation Scheme. You can get more information about terms and conditions on the website blackcat.app The bonus payment is a part of the loyalty program provided by Baltic Technology Solutions OU. Detailed terms and conditions can be found here. An integrated crypto exchange and custodial crypto wallets are provided by MANERIO Sp. z o.o. You can find more information at maner.io
