The Human Side of Fintech: How Vilnius Is Making Finance More Personal
With fragmented digital identities and eroding trust becoming frequent issues, Vilnius’s integrated fintech ecosystem can offer a human-centered approach to solving critical financial challenges.
Marius Galdikas, CEO of ConnectPay
Marius Galdikas, CEO of ConnectPay, an all-in-one financial platform for online businesses, offering embedded financial solutions with built-in compliance, noticed the reflections of this fragmented trust even in his son’s shopping habits. “I see how difficult it is for him to shop online now. He’s very worried he won’t get his stuff sold on marketplaces. He spends enormous amounts of time looking at seller reviews, validating sellers, talking to them – sometimes to the point that they block him.”
This observation isn’t merely an anecdote—it highlights how fundamentally our relationship with digital commerce has transformed. The once open and accessible internet has evolved into a landscape dominated by verification hurdles and widespread suspicion.
The fragmentation of financial identity
The erosion of trust manifests daily in our financial interactions, creating friction that significantly impacts user behavior and expectations.
“At the end of the day, I exist as many different versions of myself in the world of financial services. It’s like looking at broken mirrors—one me, but many different reflections. How do I find my true identity?” Galdikas asks.
This metaphor effectively captures our fragmented financial existence. Each individual maintains multiple accounts across various financial platforms—traditional banks, neo banks, investment services, payment providers, and cryptocurrency wallets—each reflecting only a partial version of their complete financial identity.
This fragmentation isn’t merely confusing; it actively creates friction and undermines trust. When a card is declined despite sufficient funds, or when users must manage yet another set of credentials, these aren’t minor inconveniences—they represent symptoms of a fundamentally flawed system.
“If my identity and value are both on the same device, I see a natural evolution where, for example, I could ask my AI agent to buy me tickets to Thailand.”
This vision of seamlessly integrated identity and value points toward solving the problem of broken mirrors. While we haven’t yet achieved this integration, Vilnius’s fintech innovators are already working at this critical intersection of identity, trust, and convenience.
The city’s companies are particularly well-positioned to innovate and adopt these solutions because they operate in an environment where cross-sector collaboration occurs organically and where the human impacts of financial friction are never abstract concepts but lived experiences within their community.
The Vilnius advantage: human-scale solutions
What positions Vilnius uniquely to address these challenges is precisely what might appear limiting elsewhere: its compact size and interconnectedness.
In the Lithuanian capital’s fintech ecosystem, there’s typically a real person behind every decision. Companies, regulators, and infrastructure providers aren’t distant entities—they’re neighbors, former colleagues, and collaborators. This human scale establishes natural accountability and accelerates feedback loops in ways impossible in larger financial centers.
The European Fintech Index rankings—placing Lithuania 7th in both fintech ecosystem and business environment dimensions—demonstrate that this approach delivers measurable results. Vilnius excels in diversity across fintech subsectors and collaborative values.
Regulation as evolution, not an obstacle
The attempts to improve safety in the fragmented identity environment often comes through regulation. While it can sometimes be quoted as a challenge, stalling innovation, Galdikas offers a shift in perspective. “Regulation is not a one-time event—it continuously adapts alongside innovation.”
This perspective represents a crucial shift in how Vilnius’s fintech sector approaches regulatory challenges. Rather than viewing regulations as barriers, the ecosystem increasingly recognizes them as evolutionary forces that help build sustainable trust. This acceptance of growth-related challenges distinguishes Vilnius from financial centers that either over-regulate innovation into stagnation or under-regulate at the expense of consumer protection.
Beyond technology: the human core of fintech
Vilnius may not be the global powerhouse of big fintech, but it certainly distinguishes itself with a fundamental understanding that fintech exists to solve human problems.
When your ecosystem is compact enough that you regularly encounter the people using your solutions, you naturally design with their needs at the center. When regulators and innovators meet not just in formal settings but in the city’s cafés and coworking spaces, collaboration replaces confrontation.
This human-centered approach gives Vilnius an authentic advantage in addressing the trust and identity challenges at the heart of modern finance. While larger fintech hubs may have more resources or bigger markets, Vilnius possesses something potentially more valuable: the ability to see the whole person behind the fragmented mirrors.
As fintech continues evolving globally, this focus on the human experience, rather than technology for technology’s sake, may prove to be Vilnius’s most exportable innovation.
