Fintech investors outside New York and the Bay Area: Florida, Texas, Illinois and more

• 7,163 US fintech investor records; 1,992 outside CA, NY and MA.
• Florida leads with 261 fintech records and 143 listing pre-seed.
• Chicago (202) and Miami (178) are the biggest fintech metros outside the coasts.
• Investors from banking and insurance can open doors to pilots.
• Raise where your buyers are, then add New York specialists at seed.

Fintech is often framed as a New York and San Francisco business, and those two cities do hold the largest pools. But fintech is also built in Charlotte's banks, Atlanta's payments companies, Miami's cross-border businesses and the insurance capitals of the Midwest and Northeast. The Zalarma database has 7,163 US startup investor records that list fintech, and 1,992 of them have a known state outside California, New York and Massachusetts (Zalarma investor database, as of 2026-11-01).

The national picture

Of the 7,163 fintech records, 2,986 list pre-seed, 6,425 list seed and 4,248 list Series A. Angels and syndicates account for 1,644. Check sizes cluster at $50K to $250K (3,008 records), with 1,475 at $250K to $1M and 1,429 at $1M or more.

Fintech investors by state, outside the big three

Florida leads the group with 261 records, and 143 of them list pre-seed, more than any other state outside the big three. Miami has become a magnet for fintech and crypto founders and investors; our Miami metro view has 178 fintech records. See fintech investors in Florida. Texas (247) and Illinois (215) follow, with Chicago's trading and insurance industries feeding a strong investor base.

Metros to know

• Chicago (202 fintech records): trading, insurance and B2B financial software.
• Miami (178): cross-border payments, consumer fintech and crypto.
• Austin (153): software-led fintech and banking infrastructure.
• Seattle (127) and Washington DC (115): enterprise fintech and regulatory technology.
• Atlanta (75): payments. See the Atlanta and Georgia brief.
• Charlotte: bank technology. See the North Carolina brief.

Firms with fintech investors outside the coasts

Firms with the most fintech-focused investors listed outside California, New York and Massachusetts include VentureSouth (13 listed), Hustle Fund (12), Peterson Partners (11) in Utah and Monroe Capital (10) in Chicago. Ballast Point Ventures, Manifold, Cultivation Capital, Fuel Venture Capital, Broad Street Angels and Moving Capital also appear. Several of these list pre-seed; others focus on seed and Series A.

What fintech investors ask

1. What is the regulatory model? Are you licensed, partnering with a bank, or selling software to regulated companies? Each has different risks and timelines.
2. Who carries the risk? Credit, fraud and compliance risk need clear owners.
3. How do you make money? Interchange, subscriptions, transaction fees and interest income get very different valuations.
4. Why will incumbents buy or partner rather than build? In B2B fintech, distribution through existing financial institutions is often the whole game.

Investors with banking or insurance backgrounds, common in Charlotte, Chicago and Hartford, ask these questions fast and can open doors to pilots. That is the regional fintech advantage.

A hypothetical regional fintech round

Take a hypothetical Columbus startup building compliance software for community banks. It has three paying credit unions and a former bank operations executive as an advisor. A sensible plan: open with Ohio angels who came from banking and insurance, add a regional angel network that lists fintech, then approach Chicago funds with B2B fintech experience once $300K is committed. Charlotte investors are a natural fourth stop given their bank technology focus. A New York specialist fund might join at seed, when the company can show expansion from three customers to fifteen. Each step uses investors who understand the buyer, and each commitment makes the next conversation shorter. That is far more efficient than starting with the largest fintech funds in the country, who see hundreds of decks a month and will ask the same questions a regional banker would answer in one meeting.

A fintech raise outside New York

• Raise where your buyers are. Bank software in Charlotte, insurance software in Chicago or Connecticut, payments in Atlanta.
• Recruit an advisor from the industry before the raise. A former bank or insurance executive on your cap table changes how investors read regulatory risk.
• Use the pre-seed depth in Florida and Texas. 143 Florida and 122 Texas fintech records list pre-seed.
• Add New York specialists at seed. Once you have a pilot and a local lead, fintech specialist funds move faster.

Explore the fintech investors page, or ask us to hand-pick five fintech investors who fit your stage and city.

How we counted

Counts are records in the Zalarma investor database tagged as startup investors with a US location, as of 2026-11-01. A record is a person or a firm, and one record can list several stages, sectors and check sizes, so columns do not add up to the total. Shares use only records where that field is known. We never publish a count under 10; a dash means fewer than 10. Outside the big three means a record with a known US state other than California, New York or Massachusetts. Firm counts are shown only when 10 or more. More on sources in our data.