What's a fintech? 43 insiders at powerful Wall Street firms, hot startups, and big investors weigh in on the buzzy but hard-to-define term.

Gemini; TD Ameritrade; Kabbage; Ruobing Su/Business Insider

Fintech first entered the mainstream vernacular roughly a decade ago, but with every passing year the term gets harder and harder to define.

• Business Insider polled 43 executives across the financial services world to find an answer to a seemingly simply question: what is the definition of fintech?
• Fintech first entered the mainstream vernacular roughly a decade ago, but with every passing year the term gets harder and harder to define.
• We split the responses into three groups: traditional players, fintech investors, and fintechs themselves.
• The goal was to understand how different types of firms and people define a term that's applied widely but is nearly impossible to explain concisely.
• In 2019, VCs poured more than $24 billion into startups that put a tech spin on spaces ranging from asset management to lending to payments to insurance, according to a CB Insights tally of fintech investment.
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It's arguably one of the most commonly-used terms on Wall Street, yet no one can agree what it means.

Fintech first entered the mainstream vernacular roughly a decade ago, but with every passing year the term gets harder and harder to define.

As Wall Street puts more research and focus towards technology, what can be categorized as a fintech continues to expand. And with tech players like Amazon and Uber making noise about getting into financial services, things have gotten even more confusing.

Now, one can hardly read a story about Wall Street without at least a slight suggestion of the power, potential or problems tied to fintechs.

Business Insider set out to pin down what exactly a fintech is by asking the people that should know the answer best: the investors that fund them; the traditional players that partner and compete with them; and startups themselves.

The responses were illuminating, as they provide perspective on how the most powerful players view up-and-coming technology.

And seeing these responses is crucial if you want to understand how incumbents are tackling the buy or build question, and for unpacking what's truly a disruptor and what's really just a fancy app.

Click below to see responses from all three groups:

We asked 9 execs at Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and JPMorgan what 'fintech' means to them. Here's why they say fintechs are friends, not foes.

Wall Street players largely dismissed the notion of any competition or rivalry. There was a lot of talk about partnerships, and some said that incumbents have been the real drivers of fintech all along.

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We asked 14 big backers like Bain Capital Ventures, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Point72 what counts as a fintech. They had a wide range of opinions on a $24 billion question.

Long answer short - it's complicated. Some big investors see defined borders, others described more of a continuum, and a few try to avoid the term entirely.

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We asked execs at 20 startups like Brex, Kabbage, and N26 to define 'fintech' in their own words. Here's their pitch for what deserves the buzzy label.

The lines between big tech, startups out of Silicon Valley - or Alley - and the legacy players of Wall Street are blurring. Here's where startups think they fit in.

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