Better Payments and Capital Markets connectivity, Banking transformation, smarter Microfinance solutions for rural customers, Insurance process optimization, and the rise of useful Financial Technology Startup solutions. These are just some of the changes that are coming with the rise of fintech in Armenia. Regional Post spoke to Stefan Lucas, the Chairman & CEO of FinTech Armenia, about what his organization is doing to build and develop the fintech sector—positioning Armenia as a serious player on the global stage.
Interview : Nazareth Seferian Photo : FinTech Armenia
Please tell us a little more about your personal background, Stefan. What brought you to Armenia and when?
— I was born in London and grew up in the south of France. We’re from Armenia, but my family has been based in the UK and Europe for three generations. I have been operating in the international fintech industry from London for 18 years, covering high growth regional and global transformation roles—focused on the UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa—working closely with market participants globally in the US, LATAM and APAC. I’ve had the privilege of working for world leading Financial Technology groups—across Capital Markets (IG Group), Electronic Exchanges (CME Group), Banking & Insurance AI Transformation (i.e. Charles Taylor plc), and high growth Crypto Exchanges (Bybit).
I had been working for CME Group for 5+ years when the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh had worsened; this gave me a sense of urgency to get more involved with helping connect, strengthen and internationalise Armenia - adding immediate value. I quickly joined forces with a couple of great international NGO organizations in Armenia with different fundraising programs, COAF, AGBU, FAST, helping the latter raise approximately $500K+ for AI Education at our inaugural European Gala in Paris. I also supported my sister Karine Lucas as she did some incredible grassroots work in Armenia focused on helping people who had been displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh—both in Syunik based villages and around Yerevan. At the same time, I started socialising the concept of FinTech Armenia with local / international industry leaders and pioneering technologists—all were very supportive and encouraged me to start building together with their organisations.
That brings us to the main focus of our conversation, FinTech Armenia. What is it and what is your mission?
— FinTech Armenia is an Institutional industry association and international connectivity platform—focused on building, strengthening and connecting the fintech ecosystem in Armenia, regionally and globally.
We do this through several channels, creating dynamic bridges between Armenia and the international fintech industry, building a strong brand for Armenia in this important sector. We have a very solid growing baseline of Founding / Member firms across all Financial Services verticals—and a strong global network of industry Partners. I believe FinTech Armenia’s platform counts approximately 50+ Founding / Member firms including Banks, Payment processors, Insurance companies, Capital Markets brokers, Credit organisations, Telecommunications firms, AI / Software Developers, a growing Crypto / Blockchain community, and many disruptive fintech startups—with 10+ firms now being onboarded from abroad.
Our Partner’s network is very big with 75+ global organisations across our 6 Partner pillar categories, being: Conferences, Associations, PR & Growth, HR & Education, Institutional Investors, and leading AI fintech platforms. FTA’s Partners network allows us to provide our member firms with a range of bridging, connectivity and business development opportunities. For example, UK FinTech Week, Money20/20, Singapore and Hong Kong FinTech Summits, are all part of our Conference Partner category—our members have exclusive access to these leading industry conferences at special rates—giving them greater exposure to industry innovation, to pioneering technology partners and to international customers. Given our goal to significantly grow the Financial Engineers pool in Armenia—our Partners network also includes some of the world’s best fintech Education institutions, i.e. CFTE, GFI, IFF, Oxford etc—we are bringing them to Armenia. This neatly complements our other existing local Education initiatives. This same sort of framework applies to our other Partner categories: Institutional Investors, industry Associations, PR & Growth, and leading AI fintech platforms.
The whole point of this exercise is to build dynamic bridges between Armenia and the rest of the fintech world, promoting our country as a growing regional fintech hub. Israel, Estonia, Singapore and Cyprus previously managed to grow their fintech industries exponentially in a short period of time; by working together with our Members & Partners model, we believe Armenia can do even better.
Our big overarching goal is to help enable Armenia to become a top 15 global fintech hub in the next 15-20 years.
What is your vision for the development of the industry in Armenia? What changes do you expect in the short term, and what does long-term impact look like?
— Fintech is clearly developing in Armenia—we see that in our growing membership and evolving daily conversations with market participants—bringing together traditional Financial Services and fintech companies from across the country, the region and also globally—covering all segments of the rising fintech sector. We make sure to have regular conversations with Member firms about their plans so we can help them achieve both their fintech and (where possible) their internationalization objectives. Given the demand—we are also now onboarding Member firms that are not core fintech companies but have some level of current / future synergies—to help accelerate growing the fintech category. For example, some AI and Software firms are very interested in joining us to reap the benefits of our fintech cluster, so we have welcomed them onboard!
In the short term, we fully expect the industry’s growth to accelerate and for nascent innovative tools, solutions, and technologies to proliferate across mainstream industries—from payments to banking, insurance, trading, e-commerce, digital assets and more. It’s important that fintech moves into broader mainstream industries, and does not remain a niche topic. Concretely, this means faster and more affordable access to payments, credit, and capital markets for everyday consumers, better insurance / banking tools, and easier pathways for people anywhere in the world to make purchases from Armenian companies and vice versa, opening up significant new opportunities both for local businesses and international market participants.
The longer-term impact extends well beyond financial services. Any area in which money changes hands stands to benefit from progress in the fintech sector—we are ultimately in broader terms also talking about Education, Healthcare, Asset Management, broader Economic Growth & Development. This is the scale of impact we are all working towards.
You organized FinTech Day Armenia on April 17, bringing together 200+ industry leaders from over 90 firms. Tell us more about the conference and what made it distinctive?
— New Member firms have been asking us to create an industry event for them to learn, connect and develop business.
FinTech Day Armenia 2026 was our inaugural industry conference in Yerevan, aimed both at our current members and a broader relevant audience. Attendees consisted of C-suite Transformation Executives from a range of leading innovative Financial Services & Technology firms like Banks, Insurers, Payment solution providers, Capital Markets platforms, Credit organisations, TelCos, AI Software firms, Crypto / Blockchain and disruptive fintech startups. We learnt from the feedback that it was a very positive, inclusive event - all major Financial Services Technology firms from Armenia sent senior representatives. The agenda featured 35+ Executive-level speakers from the US, UK, UAE, Germany, Denmark, and Asia—with 13+ firms represented on the Corporate FinTech Transformation Track, followed by 23+ fintech startup pitches, concluding with a short and punchy FinTech Armenia strategy, feedback & ideation session.
Our Corporate Transformation Track featured leading international corporations like VISA, EPAM, Byblos Bank, Nairi Insurance, Yesim and others—covering topics ranging from Banking Transformation and InsurTech to TradeTech, AI for financial services, Distributed Ledger Technology, the rise of Stablecoins, and more. The core approach to our conference was to do something different—aimed both at enabling our Members and also at growing the fintech category.
Generally speaking—we noticed that most technology industry conferences either have Startups pitching for funds, or senior corporate executives sitting on panels. Given we are FinTech Armenia—we decided to do something different, so we focused deeply on real-world Financial Technologies and Deal Making—with CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, CDOs and CPOs talking in depth about their product technology transformation, future roadmap, and tech needs. This approach was very well received, with clear evidence of several deals being executed post conference. We are very pleased, actively planning the next phase.
What challenges continue to exist in the field of fintech today? Who are the most important stakeholders that should be engaged in addressing them?
— There are several kinds of challenges that the fintech industry continues to face.
The first challenge is in the field of Regulation. Central Banks and Regulators can sometimes be very focused on macro stability, on having a stable currency, etc—the CBA has done an excellent job here. However, I think a conservative cautious approach needs to be well balanced with being open enough to industry transformation and embracing the right sort of future innovation. We have always had a great FinTech Armenia Working Group with the Central Bank of Armenia, so I remain optimistic. My personal hope is that the Central Bank of Armenia’s recent Consultation on Innovation in the Financial System will hopefully give birth to a Sandbox environment to help us better attract, better understand, and better support new innovative fintech platforms, tools, solutions and services. On the policy side, there has been some encouraging progress on a related topic: Armenia recently adopted the same sort of rules for Cryptocurrencies as the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.
On the Corporate side, we see two significant challenges: access to innovation and readiness to transform. At the end of the day, transformation is about human beings and mindsets, not only technology. That’s why industry conferences are so important; they give everyone access to experienced human capital. This is therefore one of the areas FinTech Armenia is working on building; access to a stronger, more experienced talent pool.
Another challenge we are working towards is providing sufficient Capital to Startups.
The European Union recently announced a grant for a consortium project covering four areas of tech, including fintech. What do you hope to see as a result of this initiative?
— We are confident that this additional EU funding will complement some of the other Institutional Investor Partners we are working with; together they will support the growing fintech startup ecosystem we are building. The goal is to enable these companies to develop, innovate, and ultimately become significant players on the world stage.
When I look more closely at the existing Financial Technology Ecosystems in the West—I believe Armenia and the broader region can benefit from stronger international payments and capital markets connectivity, more advanced microfinance solutions, fractional access to trading and investing, better banking and insurance technologies, smarter AI systems for financial services, open finance infrastructure, and perhaps also in future distributed ledger technology—these innovative areas are currently being worked on by different stakeholders. Open finance, for example, represents a major shift currently underway in the West. Imagine being able to access all of your bank accounts, credit, trading, insurance and payment solutions from a single digital wallet—where you will be able to easily and rapidly manage all of your financial services transactions from one place, and perhaps also one day some of your non-financial services applications—effectively from a super app.
The Financial Technology market is going through a major reboot, restructure & transformation—we are looking forward to helping drive that change here from Armenia—for the country, for the region, and also globally.
Armenia’s digital and financial literacy metrics are improving. How does education fit into FinTech Armenia’s vision, and what role do you see it playing?
— Education is and has always been a key factor in the evolution of our country. Armenia is currently focused on becoming an AI Hub, with several organizations driving the effort to help enable Armenia to become an AI nation. This is very good, and important. However, I believe, given the growth and rising interest, that some of this enthusiasm for AI is being channelled via our growing Institutional FinTech Armenia ecosystem platform.
My personal goal is to enable Armenia to transform into becoming a leading FinTech Nation. The path to that destination most certainly starts with Education, Enabling Innovation, bridging Corporates and Innovators, connecting and cross bridging market participants globally—we are actively working on all of these areas, every day.
Given the growth & demand from market participants—stay tuned for the upcoming soft launch of the broader FinTech EurAsia Gateway platform—continuing to better bridge high growth Eastern and Western markets!