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.