Latvia’s financial regulator, Latvijas Banka, has issued more than 20 licences to fintech companies since the start of 2026, covering payment institutions, crowdfunding platforms, investment brokerages and crypto-asset service providers. The figures emerged at a workshop hosted in Riga by the FinTech Latvia Association (FLA) and the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA), at which foreign representatives of the agency were briefed on the case for Latvia as an EU licensing base.
The event is part of a structured effort to channel inbound interest from fintech founders weighing up European domicile options. LIAA’s overseas representatives are frequently the first institutional point of contact for a foreign company exploring EU market entry, and the workshop aimed to equip them with a consistent, facts-based pitch.
The licensing proposition
Latvia’s central bank operates an Innovation Hub and a regulatory sandbox and offers free pre-licensing consultations. Latvijas Banka says a well-prepared application can be approved within two to three months of submission. That timeline, if borne out in practice, is notably compressed compared with some larger EU jurisdictions where authorisation processes can extend considerably longer and involve more procedural uncertainty.
Deputy Governor Santa Purgaile highlighted the country’s anti-money laundering record as a complementary asset. “Latvia was the first country assessed by MONEYVAL in its new, 6th evaluation round,” she noted, adding that the jurisdiction received a high or substantial effectiveness rating on ten of eleven outcomes. For compliance officers conducting jurisdictional due diligence, a strong MONEYVAL score carries material weight, particularly given the heightened scrutiny applied to Baltic financial centres in the years following a series of high-profile AML enforcement actions across the region.
Sector scale and strategic targets
Latvia’s licensed fintech base now stands at 127 companies. The sector employed 3,644 people at the end of 2024, a nine per cent increase year on year, and generated a total turnover of approximately €372 million. Profits reached €97 million, and the companies contributed more than €91 million in taxes, up 28 per cent on the prior year. Those unit economics give policymakers a clear fiscal argument for the sector’s expansion.
The cross-border reach is significant. More than 800,000 investors from outside Latvia invest through platforms licensed in the country, with German investors representing the largest single share. In aggregate, more than €13 billion has been deployed through Latvian-licensed investment platforms, which the FLA says account for close to a quarter of Europe’s peer-to-peer lending market by volume. The two largest fintech groups headquartered in Riga reported combined revenues exceeding €500 million in 2025, a figure larger than the entire domestic sector turnover, reflecting the degree to which Latvian licences are used as the legal anchor for pan-European and global operations.
Latvia’s Financial Technology Sector Development Strategy 2025 to 2027 targets a 30 per cent increase in the number of fintech companies, an 18 per cent rise in sector employment and a 15 per cent lift in attracted investment by the end of the period. FLA and LIAA will jointly attend Money20/20 Europe 2027 in Amsterdam and plan trade missions to Germany, Austria and France.
Competitive read-across
Latvia is competing for licensing mandates against a set of established EU alternatives. Lithuania built a similar proposition aggressively from 2016, becoming the dominant EU fintech licensing hub for firms exiting the UK after the Brexit referendum. Ireland and Luxembourg have captured asset management and payments mandates on the strength of their English-language environments and mature legal infrastructure. The Netherlands and Germany attract larger institutions. Latvia’s competitive angle rests on processing speed, regulator accessibility and AML credibility rather than market size or legal tradition. Whether that combination is sufficient to shift material deal flow away from Vilnius or Dublin will depend on whether the licensing timelines cited by Latvijas Banka hold at scale as application volumes increase. FLA plans to publish updated sector data in its annual Fintech Pulse 2026 report on 27 November.
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