Historically, financial services was a local player’s game.
Just look at the top 5 banks in Canada, US, UK, Canada, France and China in the chart below, ranked by total assets. There is nearly no overlap.
In fintech, historically, the same appeared to be true.
Outside of certain verticals like cross-border finance, most fintechs remained largely local. Even among the largest fintech players, their operations remain geographically concentrated in one market. Ant Financial, the largest fintech in the world valued at over $150 billion, has 70% of its Alipay users coming from inside China. The same dynamic is playing out in the U.S. For instance, Square, which is currently valued at $27b and publicly traded, earns over 95% of its revenue domestically.