15 Best Fintech M&A Advisors (2026)

1FT Partners (Financial Technology Partners)

FT Partners is the only firm on this page whose sector is not a practice area but the entire business. Its own line is blunt: "Financial Technology Partners (aka 'FT Partners') is the only investment banking firm focused exclusively on the financial technology sector." Whether or not the superlative survives scrutiny, the focus is real and it shows up in the deal list, the research output and the buyer coverage.

The 2026 record is the strongest on this page by volume and by breadth. Siris Capital on the $4.2 billion sale of Equiniti to Bullish in May. Stash on its $425 million sale to Grab in February. AEGIS Hedging Solutions on its sale to Goldman Sachs Alternatives in July. Digital Asset on a $355 million Series F led by a16z crypto in June. Payments, transfer agency, digital assets and consumer fintech, inside seven months.

The digital-assets position deserves particular attention because it is unusual. Very few banks have credible crypto-infrastructure coverage, most because they made a decision not to. FT Partners publishes crypto and blockchain as a standing transaction category and claims three of the five largest strategic M&A deals in the space. If you run a crypto or digital-asset business, this is the first call, and it may be the only one that matters.

Recent closes: Deribit on its $4.3 billion sale to Coinbase. Siris Capital on the $4.2 billion sale of Equiniti to Bullish, May 5, 2026. AvidXchange on its $2.2 billion sale to TPG and Corpay. Forge on its $660 million sale to Charles Schwab. Intermex on its $500 million sale to Western Union. Stash on its $425 million sale to Grab, February 11, 2026. AEGIS Hedging Solutions on its sale to Goldman Sachs Alternatives, July 22, 2026. Digital Asset on its $355 million Series F led by a16z crypto, June 11, 2026. Current on its $80 million Series E at a $1.5 billion valuation, June 11, 2026.

Best for: fintech businesses above roughly $100M enterprise value in payments, banking technology, digital assets and consumer finance, and any company whose buyer universe is fintech-native rather than generalist software.

Considerations: the firm publishes no founding year, no deal-size band and no minimum, so the smaller end has no published guidance to work from. A meaningful share of the published 2026 work is growth financing rather than M&A, which is a different mandate with a different fee structure. And because FT Partners is on so many fintech processes, the conflicts check matters more here than anywhere else on this list. Ask which buyers they have live relationships with before you hand over the buyer list.

2Evercore

Evercore is the independent bank most likely to be sitting opposite a bulge bracket on a large fintech deal, and unlike most of its peers it publishes a searchable transaction table with dates, values and deal status. You can check the fintech record yourself in about five minutes, which is not true of the banks in the tier above.

The named practice is worth noting because it is rare. Evercore announced a hire specifically into its FinTech Advisory Practice in 2021, and that banker's published coverage list runs across payments, market structure and financial data. Compare that to the many large banks whose fintech capability lives entirely inside a general technology or financial institutions group and is never named as a practice at all.

Recent closes: Veritas Capital's acquisition of NCR Voyix's digital banking unit, August 2024, $2,450M, closed. Gen Digital's acquisition of MoneyLion, announced December 2024, about $1,000M. Aquis Exchange sale to SIX Exchange Group, announced November 2024, £194M. Nuvei's acquisition of Paya, January 2023, $1,300M. Global Payments and EVO Payments, August 2022, $4,000M. First Data to Fiserv, January 2019, about $38,800M.

Best for: public-company fintech boards, large carve-outs from banks or software groups, and private sellers above roughly $500M who want an independent adviser with no financing conflict.

Considerations: the published fintech transactions are almost entirely buy-side or board-advisory mandates at very large scale. Several of the headline deals are more than three years old. And there is no fintech sector page, no published sub-sector team and no deal-size floor, so a founder below a few hundred million has no way to tell from the site whether they would be taken seriously.

3PJT Partners

PJT is on this list for what it does rather than for what it says. The firm publishes no fintech practice page, but its results grid carries FIS on the $13.5 billion acquisition of Global Payments' Issuer Solutions business, Kraken on the $1.5 billion NinjaTrader acquisition and Clearwater Analytics on its $8.4 billion sale to a Permira and Warburg Pincus led group. That is a genuine top-of-market payments and capital-markets-technology record.

Our own 2026 data adds a live data point. PJT advised the shareholders on the Moneris sale to Francisco Partners in August 2026, one of two 2026 fintech deals in our index where the firm was credited, and the more instructive one: a bank-owned payments joint venture carved out and sold to a sponsor. Shareholder-side advice on a carve-out with two selling banks is a specific skill, and PJT has it.

Recent closes: Moneris shareholder advisory on the sale to Francisco Partners, August 2026, about C$2.0 billion. FIS on the $13.5 billion acquisition of Global Payments' Issuer Solutions business, 2025. Kraken on the $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader, 2025. Clearwater Analytics on its $8.4 billion sale, 2025. Blucora on the $720 million sale of TaxAct to Cinven, 2022.

Best for: carve-outs, contested situations and shareholder-side advice on payments and market-infrastructure assets above roughly $500M.

Considerations: no published fintech practice, no sector taxonomy and one banker bio carrying the label. The published record skews to very large transactions and to buy-side mandates for acquirers such as FIS and Kraken. If you are a founder selling a $40M business, PJT is not built for you and will not pretend otherwise.

4Arma Partners

Arma is the European answer to FT Partners, and the closest thing this list has to a specialist that publishes its work in full. Deal pages carry a size band, a date and a sector tag, which is rarer than it should be. The firm calls itself an adviser to the global digital economy rather than a fintech bank, but two of its published verticals are fintech verticals, and the deal list backs that up.

The carve-out record is the thing to notice. Selling Finastra's universal banking division out of a Vista Equity Partners portfolio company is a different exercise from selling a founder-owned business, and it is the kind of transaction that trains a team on separation accounting, transitional services and regulated-perimeter transfer. Arma's own language on that deal points at "complex carve-out transactions". If you are a division of a bank or a software group being spun out, this is a short list of one or two firms and Arma is on it.

The cross-border numbers are also unusually specific. 86% cross-border in digital banking and payments is a claim most European advisers would not put in print. Combined with published affiliates in Istanbul, São Paulo, Sydney, Tel Aviv and Tokyo, it describes a firm that runs European assets to American and Asian buyers as its normal mode rather than as an exception.

Recent closes: Finastra's Universal Banking division to Pollen Street Capital, June 2026, published size $500M to $1B. additiv to Temenos, June 2026, value not published. smartTrade Technologies majority investment by TA Associates, March 2025, $550 million. Isabel's cloud financial workflow portfolio to Wolters Kluwer, July 2024, $352 million. Torstone Technology to FIS, February 2024, published size under $200M. Macrobond to Francisco Partners, July 2023, $740 million.

Best for: European fintech and payments businesses above roughly $150M enterprise value, and carve-outs of banking or capital-markets software divisions from larger groups.

Considerations: the published deal sizes cluster well above the lower middle market, so a $15M European payments business is unlikely to get senior attention here. The firm publishes no fee guidance and no minimum. And its fintech, wealthtech and insurtech sector page is rendered in a way that returned no readable content to us, so the team behind that specific vertical could not be verified from the site.

5Broadhaven Capital Partners

Broadhaven describes itself as an independent merchant bank advising and investing in financial services, and the word order matters. It is a financial services firm first and a technology firm second, which is the opposite of most names on this page. For a founder whose buyer is an asset manager, a broker-dealer or a bank rather than a software strategic, that orientation is worth more than a technology brand.

The 2026 deal list is dense and recent: Marstone to FusionIQ in June, Financial Northeastern Securities to InspereX in March, Droit to FIS in March, Passthrough to iCapital in February and Chimney to Array in February. That is five closes in six months in wealthtech, capital markets technology and regtech. Very few firms on this list publish that cadence in that band.

The structural news is the June 16, 2026 combination with Fenchurch Advisory Partners, the London firm founded in 2003 that advised on 27 transactions in 2025 and describes itself as the only scale investment banking firm focused exclusively on financial services. The announcement states the combined firm will have more than 110 investment bankers dedicated to financial services across London, New York, Chicago and Paris, and that Broadhaven co-founder Gerard von Dohlen joins the board. For a European fintech seller that changes the calculus: Fenchurch brings deals such as the c.£1.3 billion esure sale to Ageas and the £5.4 billion Hargreaves Lansdown take-private. It is also two months old, so ask who will be staffing your deal.

Recent closes: Marstone to FusionIQ, June 2026. Financial Northeastern Securities to InspereX Holdings, March 2026. Droit to FIS, March 2026. Eventus majority investment by Terminus Capital Partners, February 2026. Passthrough to iCapital, February 2026. Chimney to Array, February 2026. Coremont strategic investment from Blue Owl, December 2025, $40M. Diamond Hill to First Eagle Investments, 2025.

Best for: wealthtech, asset and wealth management technology, capital markets infrastructure and regtech companies whose buyers are financial institutions.

Considerations: no deal-size band, no founding year and no total transaction count are published, so the $100 billion aggregate is the only firm-level number you can check, and aggregates flatter firms with a few very large deals. Pure payments and merchant acquiring are lighter in the published record than wealth and capital markets. And the Fenchurch combination is very new.

6Houlihan Lokey

Houlihan Lokey formalised a FinTech Group in 2023, which is late for a firm of its size and turned out to be well timed. Two years later it publishes the top position in PitchBook's 2025 ranking of global fintech M&A advisers by deal count, ahead of Goldman Sachs. Volume rankings measure activity rather than outcome, but at 22 deals against a field where the fifth-placed firm did 12, the gap is not noise.

Source: PitchBook Data, Inc., as published by Houlihan Lokey on its FinTech practice page.

What makes Houlihan genuinely different in fintech is the sub-sector taxonomy. Nine verticals, with asset and wealth management technology split four ways, is a level of specificity almost nobody else publishes. It maps onto how buyers think: a fund administration platform and a personal finance app are not competing for the same acquirer, and a firm that organises its coverage that way is more likely to bring you the right fifteen names.

The second reason to look here is the special-committee and fairness-opinion franchise. Houlihan is published as the top global fairness opinion adviser over the past 25 years, and it advised the Accelerant special committee on the Thoma Bravo take-private in August 2026 while Morgan Stanley advised the board. If your deal has a conflicted shareholder, a management buyout or a strategic investor who might also bid, that capability is the product.

Recent closes: Accelerant special committee advisory on the $4B+ Thoma Bravo take-private, August 2026. Sellside adviser to Arroweye Solutions on its sale to CPI Card Group. Sellside adviser to Gresham Technologies on its acquisition by Alveo. Sellside adviser to Keylane on its sale by Waterland to Pollen Street. Sellside adviser to oneZero on the Golden Gate Capital investment. Sellside adviser to Max Matthiessen on the joint acquisition by Nordic Capital and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Buyside adviser to TA Associates on smartTrade Technologies. Dates are not published alongside these entries.

Best for: insurtech, wealth and asset management technology and capital markets technology between roughly $100M and $1B, and any situation needing a special committee or a fairness opinion.

Considerations: the published transaction list carries no dates and no values, so recency and size have to be established directly. Deal-count leadership is not deal-value leadership, and a firm doing 22 fintech deals a year staffs some of them thinly. And Houlihan's fintech record leans European and sponsor-to-sponsor; a US founder selling to a strategic should ask specifically about that pattern.

7Keefe, Bruyette & Woods

KBW has covered financial institutions since 1962 and has been part of Stifel since 2013, which gives it something unusual on this list: a research and equity sales franchise built entirely around financial services, sitting next to the banking team. For a fintech company whose buyers are banks, insurers and specialty lenders, that is the relevant relationship map, and it is not one a technology bank has.

The Kard Financial sale to Citi in August 2026 is the cleanest illustration. Citi published that Keefe, Bruyette & Woods acted as exclusive financial adviser to Kard, a commerce media and rewards platform, and that terms were not disclosed. A single specialist bank, a large regulated strategic buyer, no price. That is the shape of most real fintech deals, and it is the shape KBW runs constantly.

Recent closes: exclusive financial adviser to Kard Financial on its sale to Citi, announced August 13, 2026, terms not disclosed. KBW publishes its transaction history only as untagged tombstone images, so we could not verify further named deals from its own site.

Best for: fintech businesses whose acquirer is a bank, insurer, specialty lender or exchange, especially in payments, specialty finance and mortgage or real estate technology.

Considerations: the site publishes no deal list you can read, no deal-size band and no fintech-specific deal values, so verification means asking. The financial-services orientation cuts both ways: if your likely buyer is a software strategic or a technology sponsor, a technology bank will know that pool better. And KBW sits inside Stifel, so ask which entity and which team will run your process.

8Raymond James

Raymond James is the middle-market workhorse of this list. It is not a fintech specialist and does not claim to be, but financial technology is one of five named sectors inside a technology and services practice of more than 50 senior bankers, and the published 2026 transaction flow in that sector is steady rather than occasional.

The other thing Raymond James brings is a wealth management business with roughly $1.92 trillion of client assets. If you sell advisor technology, custody infrastructure or wealth compliance software, the firm's own distribution business is a live map of your buyer universe. That is a genuine structural advantage and also a conflict question worth asking directly.

Recent closes: AmericanTCS, August 2026. Red Violet, identity intelligence, August 2026. Agenium, insurance technology, May 2026. CQG, trading and market data, May 2026. K1x, tax workflow, April 2026. Valitana, CLO analytics, March 2026. InvestEdge, wealth compliance software, February 2026. Counterparties and values are published only inside tombstone images.

Best for: middle-market wealthtech, advisor technology, capital markets technology and insurance software companies with US strategic and sponsor buyers.

Considerations: Raymond James publishes a disclaimer that its transaction history "may include transactions completed by a Raymond James banker while at a former firm", so a tombstone is not necessarily a firm credential. No fintech-designated banker is named on the site, only technology co-heads. Counterparties and values are image-only, and the transaction history page was inaccessible to us. And a bank of this size with an enormous wealth franchise has more conflict surface than a boutique.

9Piper Sandler

Piper Sandler is the only firm on this page with two independent routes into fintech: a financial services group descended from Sandler O'Neill, which is the reference name in US bank M&A, and a technology group with its own published fintech sub-sectors. The two hiring announcements in 2024 that placed fintech-focused Managing Directors inside the technology team were an explicit attempt to join them up.

That structure is worth understanding before you engage, because it determines who runs your deal. A payments processor selling to a bank gets the financial services group and its regulatory fluency. A financial SaaS business selling to a software sponsor gets the technology group and its comp sets. Ask which one is pitching you, and ask why.

One honest note on the numbers. Piper Sandler's financial services page headlines "311 financial services M&A deals since 2018" and then footnotes the source window as January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2025. The figures are real and sourced to S&P Global Market Intelligence; the "since 2018" framing does not match its own footnote. We quote the footnote.

Recent closes: Ripple Prime senior notes offering as sole placement agent, tagged fintech, August 17, 2026. Adamas Trust $90.0 million senior notes, August 11, 2026. Knighthead Annuity & Life Assurance $75.0 million senior notes, July 31, 2026. Columbia Financial $522.9 million follow-on offering, July 16, 2026. First Carolina Bancshares merger with First Bank, $166.0 million, July 14, 2026.

Best for: payments, capital markets technology and wealth management technology businesses in the US middle market, and any fintech whose buyer is a bank or an insurer.

Considerations: the published 2026 transaction flow on the financial services page is heavily capital markets work, notes offerings and bank mergers rather than fintech sell-side M&A. Only two Managing Directors are publicly identified as fintech-focused. And the headline deal statistics carry the date inconsistency described above, which is a small thing that tells you to read the footnotes on every league-table claim you are shown.

10Lincoln International

Lincoln is the global mid-market generalist with a real financial services group attached, and the reason to consider it over a specialist is coverage geography. More than 30 offices in 14 countries means a European or Asian buyer for your US business gets called by someone local, which is a materially different outreach than a New York boutique emailing a corporate development inbox.

The fintech evidence is credible but thinner than the specialists. Financial technology and payments is one of six named sector focuses, and the firm publicly expanded that coverage with a Chicago hire in 2025 aimed at office-of-the-CFO and application software. Its MarshBerry acquisition pushed further into insurance and wealth distribution, which is adjacent to insurtech and wealthtech without being the same thing.

Recent closes: NatWest Group's sale of Cushon, a workplace savings and pensions fintech, to Willis Towers Watson, published as 2026, adding almost £4 billion in assets under management and 730,000 members to the buyer. Reverence Capital Partners' recapitalisation of Osaic at more than $2 billion. Refinancing for Reassured. RoundShield Partners to Harrison Street. Dvara KGFS minority investment from Sparkassen International Development Trust.

Best for: mid-market wealth, pensions and insurance technology businesses with a cross-border buyer profile, and sponsors selling financial services portfolio companies.

Considerations: Lincoln publishes no founding year, no financial services deal count and no deal-size band, and its transaction pages often carry a year but no date. Fintech is one of six sector focuses inside a firm that covers everything, so the depth question is real. Several of the published financial services deals are recapitalisations and refinancings rather than outright sales.

11Canaccord Genuity

Canaccord is the growth-company bank on this list, and its relevance to fintech is specific rather than general. It publishes a Financials practice that foregrounds credit, specialty finance and payments, and a separate blockchain and digital assets coverage sector, which is unusual among mid-size banks and genuinely useful if you sit in either corner.

What you are buying here is public-market adjacency. With research coverage across a thousand stocks and a stated 472 investment banking transactions in FY2026, this is a firm whose natural client is a growth company weighing a sale against a listing or a growth round. If your board is genuinely undecided between an exit and a capital raise, that optionality is worth something. If you have decided to sell, a pure M&A specialist will usually run a tighter process.

Recent closes: H&T Group, £297m all-cash acquisition by FirstCash, August 2025. TMX Group's US$300m acquisition of Cboe Australia and Cboe Canada, shown as pending completion. B HODL Plc lead broker appointment, September 2025.

Best for: specialty finance, credit and digital-asset businesses that want a bank comfortable with both a sale and a public-market route.

Considerations: the words fintech and financial technology do not appear on the firm's homepage, capital markets page or Financials sector page. The coverage is real; the fintech label is our inference from the published sub-sectors, not their claim. The named Financials bankers are all UK, Europe and Middle East, so a US-only seller should ask who would run the mandate. And several of the published Financials deals are buy-side or broker appointments rather than sell-side M&A.

12Windsor Drake

Windsor Drake is the only firm here whose entire published identity is fintech founders. The homepage line is "The Investment Bank for Fintech Founders", the deal band is stated in dollars rather than implied, and the process is documented down to a count: a 145-step sell-side process across six gated phases, planned across roughly nine months. Most firms describe their process in adjectives. This one describes it in steps.

The sponsor-bank and BaaS practice is the differentiator worth paying for. Sponsor-bank concentration is the single most common valuation killer we see in payments and neobank diligence, because a buyer underwriting your business is underwriting your bank partner's appetite as much as your revenue. A firm that names that as a practice area, rather than treating it as a diligence surprise, is telling you where its reps are.

The other reason to take Windsor Drake seriously is the Fintech Exit Index. Publishing sub-sector medians at 5.6x for insurance software and 0.8x for digital insurance distribution, and separating pre-2022 completions at 12.2x from post-2022 at 7.6x, is work that only gets done by people who price these companies for a living. It is also checkable, which is the point.

Recent closes: none published. The site references selected transactions without naming any, and no transaction count appears anywhere on it.

Best for: founder-led and family-owned fintech, payments and BaaS businesses between $5M and $300M enterprise value, particularly first-time sellers who want a documented process.

Considerations: this is the clearest verification gap on the page. A firm that publishes a 145-step process and a valuation index but not one named client is asking you to take the track record on trust. Ask for three references from closed deals in the last twenty-four months before you sign. The firm also discloses only that securities-related services are "provided through appropriately licensed parties" rather than naming a registered entity, so ask which one signs your engagement letter.

13DAI Magister

DAI Magister is the emerging-markets and UK growth specialist on this list, and the reason to look at it is a buyer network most American banks do not have. The Cellulant investment by TPG Growth is described on the firm's own site as the largest investment ever in an Africa-dedicated fintech group. If your revenue comes from Africa, the Middle East or South and Southeast Asia, the buyer for your business may well not be in New York, and very few advisers can credibly reach that pool.

The UK record is also real and recent. Advising Freetrade on its £160 million sale to IG Group in January 2025 is a clean, dated, sell-side fintech close at a size where most founders on this page sit. Tandem's £60m capitalisation and two Nutmeg financing rounds fill out a digital-banking and wealthtech track record that predates most of the specialists on this list.

Recent closes: Freetrade to IG Group Holdings, January 2025, £160 million. Tandem £60m capitalisation and expansion. Nutmeg £30m investment from Convoy and existing investors, and a separate £12m from Taipei Fubon Bank. TPG Growth's stake in Cellulant. Capricorn Digital, trading as Baxi, to MFS Africa. Mopay AG to Boku.

Best for: UK and emerging-market fintech businesses between roughly £10m and £200m, particularly digital banking, wealth and African payments.

Considerations: the firm's published centre of gravity is climate tech and emerging markets rather than fintech, and fintech is one sub-sector among seven. The banking team is small, six named professionals, so partner bandwidth is a real constraint on a competitive process. Several of the named fintech transactions are financings rather than sales. And the site publishes no founding year and no firm-level transaction count.

14Corum Group

Corum is the oldest firm on this page by a wide margin and the one most likely to take a mandate under $20M. It is a software M&A firm that happens to publish financial-services and payments deals, not a fintech bank, and for a certain kind of seller that is the better trade. If your company is a bookkeeping platform or a claims workflow tool, being positioned as vertical software rather than as fintech usually widens the buyer list.

The published transaction taxonomy is the useful part. Every deal carries a date, a market, a sub-sector and both countries, so you can filter to Financial Services or Payments and see genuine recent activity rather than a logo wall. Four deals in the last twelve months carried those labels, which is modest in absolute terms and meaningful for a firm working in the sub-$50M band where most transactions never get announced at all.

Recent closes: Liventus to Tamarack, April 2026, financial services, US to US. Smile Sail to Twikey, February 2026, payments, Belgium to Belgium. ACI Worldwide to Payment Components, November 2025, financial services, US to Greece. RECUR to Collect!, September 2025, financial services, US to Canada. No values published on any of them.

Best for: founder-owned financial software and payments businesses under roughly $50M, especially outside the US, and sellers who want to be marketed as a software company.

Considerations: Corum publishes no deal-size band and no values on its financial-services transactions, so you cannot tell from the site whether its typical close is $8M or $80M. Its model is heavily built around conferences and a proprietary database, which is a genuine buyer-sourcing advantage and also a marketing funnel; be clear which one you are in. And it is not a regulated-perimeter specialist, so a licensed money transmitter or a sponsor-bank-dependent business is better served elsewhere.

15L40

L40 is an M&A advisory firm covering software, technology and AI businesses across the US, Europe and Latin America, and it is on this page for a specific and narrow reason: a large share of the companies founders call fintech are software businesses that sell to finance, not licensed operators. For those companies, a cross-border software advisory practice frequently produces a better comp basket and a wider buyer list than a fintech bank would.

The firm's positioning is cross-border. The name refers to latitude 40 degrees north, and the published transaction history spans North America, Europe and Latin America, with more than 180 transactions over twenty years. That matters in the fintech-adjacent software band because the buyer for a European e-invoicing platform is very often American, and the buyer for a Latin American billing platform is very often European. L40 operates in the United States under the SEC's M&A broker exemption in Section 15(b)(13) of the Securities Exchange Act rather than as a broker-dealer, which the firm discloses on its own site.

Recent closes: KrakenD to Shop Circle. First Promoter to SpringWater. Big Red Cloud to Melior Private Equity. Trenes to Ixigo. Elipse to Runtime. The firm publishes no dates, values or sector labels on its transaction list.

Best for: founder-led software and technology businesses up to $100M ARR with a cross-border buyer profile, including fintech-adjacent platforms that hold no licence and move no money.

Considerations: we could not verify a single named fintech transaction. Fintech platforms appear once in L40's published list of covered verticals, and no transaction on the site carries a fintech, payments, lending or insurance label. If your business is a licensed money transmitter, a lender on balance sheet or a sponsor-bank-dependent platform, a regulated-perimeter specialist earlier in this list is the better fit. The transaction list also carries no dates or values, so recency has to be established in conversation.