For fintech companies, expansion is just part of the job. You grow, or you get left behind. However, entering new markets (especially in Europe) is rarely smooth sailing. Most fintechs start out in friendly ecosystems — places like France or Germany — where there is access to capital, infrastructure, and the kind of talent that knows how to get things off the ground.

But once you try to move beyond those first hubs, things start to shift.

Regulatory challenges pile up. Customer behavior is not uniform. Operations that once ran smoothly now start to crack under pressure. You cannot scale on enthusiasm alone. And that is where technology, especially AI, gets called in. But it is important to note that AI is not some magic bullet: it does not run your company — it supports it. And without sharp human judgment, it is just a very expensive guessing machine.

To ignore AI is to build a 20th-century business in the 21st

Just a few years ago, AI was a novelty. Now? It is baked into how modern companies operate. Already, 82% of all companies in the world are using AI in day-to-day operations. And it is, of course, not only relevant to small- or middle-sized companies as 92% of Fortune 500 firms (such as Walmart or Netflix) have adopted AI as well. McKinsey’s survey also found that 78% of companies are deploying AI across functions like IT, sales, marketing, and ops.

In other words, AI is not a nice-to-have, it is a necessity to stay competitive.

What has changed is that today’s AI tools go way beyond automating the basics. They are helping teams refine sales strategies, pick the right vendors, optimize go-to-market plans, and even spot compliance issues before they become costly. Generative AI, like ChatGPT, has changed how teams gather insights, replacing hours of desk research with real-time, contextual answers. When entering new markets, companies are using AI to instantly assess suppliers, simulate customer journeys, and size up the competitive landscape.

That all might not sound very impressive as we all are already used to it. However, for companies it is in fact a very big change — while before expanding into a new region used to take months of prep work, now, thanks to AI, companies can make faster, smarter decisions with much fewer missteps. It is like upgrading from a hand-drawn map to real-time GPS.