The European Fintech Association was launched in June 2020 by around twenty startups. The aim: to convey a clear and coherent message to public opinion, and to defend and represent their interests in policy-making.
Participate in European issues affecting financial services
The EFA brings together leading European fintechs, whose aim is to speak with one voice on European issues affecting financial services. Indeed, the Covid-19 crisis demonstrated the ability of startups to react quickly and provide solutions for businesses and consumers alike.
The association has defined a number of priority topics, starting with the creation of a single Europe-wide Fintech market to enable platforms to offer their services to all users on the continent without having to generate a new version of their site for each country. The aim is also to provide consumers and businesses with uniform protection rules and, more generally, to create a climate of trust with customers. According to EFA, the removal of cross-border barriers is essential to enable users to access the same quality of financial services wherever they are.
Other topics of interest to the association include IBAN discrimination, PSD2, the unification of anti-money laundering rules, and the promotion of open banking and open finance initiatives.
Fintechs of all sizes from all over Europe
"EFA is the first non-profit organization based in Brussels to represent more than twenty FinTech companies of all sizes, from all over Europe," says the association in a statement published on June 16. Its members include neobanks, robot-advisors, banking as a service companies and lending platforms. They include mobile bank N26, online savings platform Raisin, international money transfer company Transferwise and European open banking platform Tink.
An increasingly unpredictable environment for fintechs
The health crisis is impacting the entire economy, including Fintechs, which must continue to adapt in order to survive.
In the current economic upturn, the payments sector, which is partly driven by e-commerce, and the insurance sector are not facing any major difficulties. However, the consequences of the crisis differ according to the development phase of startups. Start-ups that are testing their business model and not yet in the marketing phase could suffer from the reluctance of consumers to invest. One of EFA's objectives is also to support the talent and growth of fintechs in Europe.