Fintech PMF in Europe: PSD2, DORA, and Why Compliance Is Your Product-Market Fit Signal

The European fintech startups with the most durable PMF in 2026 are the ones that treated compliance architecture as a product feature rather than regulatory overhead. PSD2 created the open banking infrastructure that enabled dozens of distinct PMF cases, startups that built on it rather than around it found defensible positions. DORA is doing the same for operational resilience tooling: enterprise buyers now weight compliance posture as heavily as core functionality. The signal worth tracking: is your compliance architecture a reason enterprise buyers specifically choose you, or merely a reason they don't automatically reject you? Those are different market positions with meaningfully different commercial implications.