What are the biggest fintech challenges in New York City, and what would help companies address them?

It wouldn't be out of place to say, there that fintech challenges aren't related to NYC or a particular city. Fintech itself is an amalgamation of finance (or financial) and technology. Using technology to cater to financial services is fintech. Whether you are based in NYC or some other corner of the world, the goal is to seek a financial services problem for which you think a technological solution can be juxtaposed to solve it.

Licensing remains the main challenge for all fintech companies. As more and more regulators are clamping down on money-related activities, many fintech companies are finding themselves in a tight-spot, they have the solution, but no license to operate it.

Access to license holders (be it money transmitters, or banks, etc.) is a vital requirement for fintech companies. The number of problems areas are many, access to banking, money movement, financial services partners, etc.

Second challenge is based around the regulatory compliance aspect of it. Whilst many fintech companies utilize technology and behavior to solve a problem, being compliant from a regulatory point of view is another challenge. In some instances, the very solution model is disturbed by being compliant.