Finance teams now sit in 46% of software purchase decisions, up from 31% a year earlier, and 49% of buyers say a CFO vetoed a purchase their team had already approved, according to G2's 2026 Buyer Behavior Report, a survey of 1,038 B2B decision makers in June 2026. For a fintech vendor that sells to finance teams, the most sceptical reader of the website is now in the room for almost every deal.
This page collects the dated numbers on how fintech is bought: how long the journey runs, how much of it buyers want to do alone, what finance leaders, banks and credit unions check first, and what 25 fintech vendor sites actually give a buyer researching alone. The cross-industry buyer data is in our B2B SaaS Buyer Journey Statistics 2026 post; this one stays on fintech and its regulated buyers.
Why the fintech numbers are partly proxies
No publisher we found runs an openly published buyer journey survey limited to B2B fintech. What exists is cross-industry software buyer data from G2, Gartner, 6sense, Forrester and TrustRadius, plus smaller surveys of the people fintech actually sells to.
Fintech has three distinct buyers. Finance teams buy spend, payables and receivables tools. Banks and credit unions buy core banking, cards, identity and fraud infrastructure, under regulatory due diligence rules. Product and engineering teams at other fintechs buy APIs, and start in the documentation. Each section below says which buyer a figure describes.
Research time: the journey is long, and evaluation is now the bottleneck
| Measure | Figure | Source and sample |
|---|---|---|
| Average buying cycle | 10.1 months (11.3 the year before) | 6sense, nearly 4,000 buyers, 2025 |
| Time spent evaluating each vendor | 2.0 months (2.6 the year before) | 6sense, 2025 |
| Point of first seller contact | 61% of the way through the journey (69% before) | 6sense, 2025 |
| Shortlist ranked before any seller contact | 94% | 6sense, 2025 |
| Winning vendor already on the day-one shortlist | 95% | 6sense, 2025 |
| Longest stage: evaluation, research, decision | 40%, 36%, 22% | G2, 1,038 decision makers, June 2026 |
| Top delay after selection: IT security review | 39% (50% at enterprises) | G2, June 2026 |
| Top delay after selection: budget approval, implementation planning | 32%, 25% | G2, June 2026 |
Source: 6sense 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report; G2 2026 Buyer Behavior Report
Both publishers sell to B2B marketers: 6sense sells buyer-intent software and G2 runs a software review marketplace. Their figures still describe the same shape. Buyers take most of a year, make up their minds early, and then spend the longest stretch proving the choice to security, finance and procurement.
The fintech version is slower. The two delays G2 names, security review and budget approval, are exactly the two gates every fintech sale passes through. A bank adds a formal third-party due diligence process on top. We found no survey that measures how long that process takes for a fintech vendor, so we do not quote a figure.
Finance is in the room. G2 found finance involvement in software decisions rose from 31% to 46% in one year, while information security involvement fell from 32% to 25%. Among buyers who had a CFO veto, 79% now lean towards shorter contracts. A spend or payables vendor is selling to the function that holds the veto.
Self-serve preference: research alone, then validate
| Measure | Figure | Source and sample |
|---|---|---|
| Prefer a rep-free buying experience | 61% (2024 survey), 67% (2025 survey) | Gartner, 632 and 646 buyers, August to September each year |
| Prefer first sales contact at evaluation or decision | 62% (46% in 2024) | G2, 1,169 software buyers, April 2025 |
| Prefer first sales contact during research | 31% (43% in 2024) | G2, April 2025 |
| Buyer, not seller, initiated first contact | 79% | 6sense, 2025 |
| Shortlisted three or fewer products | 83% | TrustRadius, 1,862 technology buyers, January 2026 |
| Bought some form of trial before committing | More than 60% | Forrester, nearly 18,000 business buyers |
| See inconsistencies between vendor website and sellers | 69% | Gartner, 632 buyers, August to September 2024 |
Sources: Gartner, as republished; G2 2025; 6sense 2025; TrustRadius 2026; Forrester 2026
The direction is consistent across every source. Buyers want to reach a ranked shortlist of two or three on their own, then bring in a salesperson to confirm it. Forrester's trial figure matters for fintech: its definition runs from limited pilots to paid sandbox environments, which is how most payments and banking infrastructure is evaluated.
The 69% is the fintech risk. When a bank's due diligence team or a CFO compares the website with the sales deck and the SOC 2 report, any gap is read as a control weakness, not a copy error.
What fintech's three buyers check first
| Buyer | Finding | Figure | Source and sample |
|---|---|---|---|
| Banks and credit unions | Compliance is the top criterion for evaluating a fintech | 72% | Ncontracts with CBANC, 147 professionals, 2023 |
| Banks and credit unions | Cybersecurity, ROI, reputation cited as critical | 62%, 46.3%, 44.4% | Same survey |
| US banks, $30m to $7bn assets | Integration capability is the top criterion for a fintech partner | 44% | York Public Relations, 802 C-level executives, November to December 2024 |
| Finance leaders | Consult peers before formal research; use Google; review sites; AI tools | 72%, 64%, 30%, 12% | Wynter, 100 CFOs and VPs of finance, $50m+ revenue companies |
| Finance leaders | Examine total cost of ownership before sales contact | 66% | Wynter |
| Finance leaders | Cost, then ROI, as decision criteria | 76%, 48% | Wynter |
| Financial firms buying software | Regret a purchase made in the past 18 months | 70% | Capterra, 401 financial firms in a 3,500-business survey |
| Financial firms buying software | Build the vendor list from past experience; from reputation | 49%, 48% | Capterra |
Sources: Ncontracts, September 2023; York Public Relations 2025 State of Fintech, via Chimney; Wynter; Capterra 2025 Tech Trends Survey, via CPA Practice Advisor
The bank figures carry caveats. Ncontracts sells third-party risk software and its survey is three years old; York Public Relations is a fintech PR firm and we read its findings through a vendor's repost. Ncontracts also notes that more than 80% of respondents said the fintechs they evaluated understood regulation and vendor management, which it reads as banks only shortlisting fintechs that already do.
Finance leaders verify, they rarely lead. Wynter found only 16% of CFOs and VPs of finance lead vendor selection end to end; 30% act as final approvers and 20% advise. Our Fintech Demo Request and Lead Form Statistics 2026 post covers Wynter's verification figures. The website's job for this buyer is a three-to-five-year cost picture they can check without a call.
Regulation puts the website inside due diligence
The interagency guidance on third-party relationships, issued by the Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC on 6 June 2023, sets a five-stage life cycle: planning, due diligence and selection, contract negotiation, ongoing monitoring and termination. Its due diligence stage lists 14 areas, from financial condition and information security to reliance on subcontractors.
Two lines matter to a website. Under business experience, the guidance says a review of the third party's websites and marketing materials may help a bank decide whether its statements accurately represent its capabilities. Under risk management, it suggests reviewing SOC reports and independent certifications. In the EU, the Digital Operational Resilience Act has applied since 17 January 2025 and requires financial entities to manage ICT third-party risk, including a register of information on their providers.
What 25 fintech sites give the buyer who researches alone
We read the public sites of the same 25 B2B fintech vendors covered in our demo request post on 21 October 2026. For each, we checked five touchpoints a self-serve buyer looks for: a published price, a security page or trust centre, public API documentation, a sign-up or sandbox that does not need a sales call, and pages comparing the vendor with named competitors. We fetched pages and sitemaps directly and did not create any accounts.
| Segment | Published price | Security or trust page | Public API docs | Self-serve sign-up or sandbox | Competitor comparison pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payments and payouts (5) | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| Spend, AP and AR (9) | 6 | 9 | 7 | 4 | 8 |
| Banking infrastructure and cards (8) | 1 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 1 |
| Identity and fraud (3) | 0 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| All 25 | 10 | 24 | 22 | 15 | 10 |
Source: Octo Agency read of 25 vendor sites, 21 October 2026. Vendors: Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, Nium, Trolley; Ramp, Brex, Bill, Pleo, Spendesk, Payhawk, HighRadius, Billtrust, Routable; Plaid, Unit, Treasury Prime, Synctera, Lithic, Marqeta, Mambu, Thought Machine; Alloy, Sardine, Socure.
Security is universal, price is not. Only Thought Machine had no security page we could find. Fifteen vendors published no price: five had a pricing page that explains the model without a figure (Checkout.com, Spendesk, HighRadius, Plaid, Socure) and ten had none. Banking infrastructure was the most closed: Synctera's $60,000-a-year Labs programme was the only price, and it is not in the main navigation.
Spend tools sell like software, infrastructure sells like a bank. Eight of nine spend and payables vendors run comparison or alternative pages naming rivals. Among the other 16, only Trolley and Lithic do. All five payments vendors offered a test account or sign-up, so a developer can start without a call.
Five sites had all five touchpoints: Trolley, Ramp, Brex, Bill and Pleo. All 25 publish customer stories.
What the data does not say
No dataset we found measures how many pages a fintech buyer views before a demo, how long bank due diligence takes for a fintech vendor, or how developers weigh documentation against price when choosing a payments API. The bank surveys are small and from vendors. Our 25-site read is a snapshot of what is published, not of what converts.
What this means for a fintech site: a five-page test order
Fintech buyers rank a shortlist alone, then spend the longest stage proving it to security, finance and, for banks, a regulator-shaped due diligence file. The pages to fix first carry that proof without a call.
1. Security and compliance. Almost everyone has one, so it is a hygiene check, not an edge. Test whether it names certifications, licences and partner banks in the same words as the SOC report.
2. Pricing. Ten of 25 publish a figure. Finance leaders look at total cost of ownership before calling, so test a starting price or worked scenario against "contact sales", measured on qualified pipeline.
3. Docs and sandbox. For infrastructure, the documentation is the product page. Test how fast a developer reaches a working API key.
4. Comparison pages. Spend vendors already run them. Infrastructure and identity vendors mostly do not, which leaves the AI answer and the review site to make the comparison.
5. Demo or contact page, last. It is reached at evaluation, by a buyer with a ranked shortlist. Keep it short and route it fast.
We build marketing sites in Webflow on a four-week process, and this order is where we would start a fintech brief. Our marketing websites service page explains how we scope one.
