How Google Cloud Is Helping Fintechs Navigate Regulation and Innovation

Karen Zhang from Google Cloud breaks down how they are supporting fintechs through a period of rapid regulatory change and accelerated innovation. Google explains that the work with fintechs broadly falls into three areas: infrastructure resilience, regulatory compliance, and next-generation product development.

At the foundational level, Google highlights how cloud infrastructure helps fintechs stay resilient while freeing teams from the burden of managing core systems and by using serverless, scalable, and multi-region cloud services. Therefore, financial institutions organisations can focus less on “keeping the lights on” and more on building products that genuinely serve their customers. As new regulations, such as the EU’s DORA, require fintechs to demonstrate multi-cloud strategies, strong security practices and more. Google’s teams work closely with their clients to ensure their platforms are both compliant and secure, helping them meet these regulatory expectations with confidence.

Moving beyond infrastructure, Zhang discusses how fintechs are using cloud services to develop new products and services which is where innovation really accelerates. From improving customer personalisation to streamlining the back-office, cloud-based tools are helping teams scale efficiently and prepare for their next phase of growth. Google describes this approach as using cloud capabilities like Lego, starting with infrastructure, layering in data, and then unlocking deeper insights and business value from what companies already have.

At the top layer sits AI and Google points to growing excitement around explainable AI models, including Google’s Gemini family, and how they can be applied in real-world financial services use cases as these tools allow fintechs to extract more value from data while remaining transparent and trustworthy, with qualities that matter deeply in financial services. Ultimately, Zhang emphasises that the goal is not just better technology, but better outcomes for end customers and consumers.