ContextRemarks marking the tenth anniversary of a forum linking supervisors and fintech firms; the Banque de France supervises banks and safeguards stability, and its main challenge is fast technological change.
Why it mattersIt gives a French supervisor's view of how tokenisation, artificial intelligence and geopolitics should shape fintech oversight over the next decade.
- Frontier artificial intelligence may outpace rules built for earlier technology and harm access to credit or insurance.
- Tokenisation of assets changes market structure and creates new questions for supervisors.
- Geopolitical fragmentation turns Europe's dependence on foreign digital technology into a possible weakness.
- Treat young fintech firms with the same openness and attention as established financial players.
- Reinforce the existing IT and AI rulebooks so they can handle the most advanced models.
- Back competitive European providers and infrastructure to strengthen the region's technological autonomy.
Read the speech summary
1. A vital ecosystem
At the tenth ACPR-AMF Fintech Forum, his first as governor, Emmanuel Moulin says financial technology firms, now more than 1 200 with about 55 000 jobs in France, drive the sector's dynamism and have matured into a mix that includes fifteen billion-dollar companies. The aim is now to help them scale. Funding rose 51% in the first half of 2026 but remains fragile and needs more European equity, which the Savings and Investments Union should supply through pension and retirement savings, venture partnerships, accessible household products, financial education, a common 28th company regime and a proper European framework for market infrastructure and post-trade.
2. Two guiding principles for supervisors
First, balance innovation with trust through proportionality, synergy with existing processes and technology-neutral rules that keep competition fair. Second, keep a regular, demanding dialogue with the whole ecosystem, since newcomers and incumbents, whether rivals or partners, jointly strengthen Europe against big tech. Tools include a Fintech Charter and the ACPR's innovation unit, and contacts from project leaders have risen sharply in 2026.
3. Challenge one: tokenisation
Faster settlement and lower costs come with stability and sovereignty worries, notably reliance on foreign infrastructure and settlement assets denominated in other currencies. The response has three pillars: central bank money for the digital age, with the digital euro for the public, the wholesale ledger service Pontes launched on 21 September and the longer-term Appia ecosystem; homegrown tokens issued by commercial banks, including deposits and euro stablecoins, pushed by a new Paris strategic group and illustrated by a project settling short-term paper with central bank tokens by end-2026; and regulation, with a targeted revision of the crypto-asset rules and a permanent pilot regime with ceilings near 300 billion euros.
4. Challenges two and three: AI and fragmentation
Nearly eighty percent of fintechs use artificial intelligence, which brings risks for access to credit and insurance, opaque decisions and cyber threats, illustrated by the summer attack on a developer platform. The digital resilience rules and the AI Act, which the ACPR will enforce for high-risk systems from December 2027, provide a base, but frontier models will likely need stronger rules. Geopolitical fragmentation exposes reliance on largely non-European cloud, models and computing capacity, so Europe must foster competitive homegrown players, a goal supported by the Commission's technology sovereignty package. Innovation must go hand in hand with confidence, and Europe should fund and build technology rather than merely import it.