General information

Population

11.8M

Online population

11.3M

Currency

EUR

Market overview

Population - 11.8M

At the start of 2026, 98.3% of Belgium’s population lived in urban centres, while 1.7% lived in rural areas.

Internet penetration - 96.3%

There were 11.3 million internet users in Belgium at the start of 2026.

FinTech Outlook: Trends, Insight & Technology

Belgium has a small and unusually infrastructure-heavy fintech market. Much of the ecosystem is B2B, providing payment technology, compliance tools, wealth-management software and other services to banks and financial institutions. In 2026, payments and B2B financial technology are the two largest segments of the local fintech industry.

On the payments side, instant bank transfers grew 54% in 2025 and now account for almost a third of Belgian transfers, supported by new EU rules that make instant payments a standard banking service.

AI is also moving quickly from experiment to everyday banking. As an example, in late 2025, Belgian bank KBC upgraded Kate, its digital assistant, with generative AI; it can now resolve around 70% of customer queries independently and the bank is already planning to let the assistant handle even more complex tasks for customers in the near future.

As financial institutions adopt more AI, cybersecurity and compliance are becoming an important part of Belgium’s fintech story too. In June 2026, the Belgian financial regulator warned that increasingly powerful AI could expose financial firms to new cyber risks. At the same time, DORA and the EU AI Act are introducing stricter requirements around technology and AI. This is creating new demand for RegTech, cybersecurity and compliance tools, building on Belgium’s already strong B2B fintech sector.

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Belgium’s Favorite Payment App Is Going European

Belgium already has a widely used homegrown payment system. Bancontact is the national card scheme, while Bancontact/Payconiq made QR payments an everyday habit, processing more than 430 million mobile payments in 2025.

Now Belgium is connecting this ecosystem to Wero, the wallet backed by European banks. The goal is ambitious: build a European payment network that can compete with Visa, Mastercard and PayPal.

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Banks

Belgium’s banking market is highly concentrated around KBC, BNP Paribas Fortis, Belfius and ING Belgium, and customers are unusually loyal: only around 2% switched their main bank in the past year. And these incumbents are evolving quickly. In 2026, AI is moving into everyday banking, from customer assistants to fraud detection, KYC and internal processes. KBC’s Kate, Belfius’ chatbot and BNP Paribas Fortis’ Samy can already resolve most conversations without human intervention.