NEKOD featured among Europe’s Top 8 fintech startups by Money20/20

Shadow IT used to mean employees installing unauthorized software. Now it means employees building entire applications with AI, connecting them to production data, and sharing them across teams. Money20/20 Europe recognized NEKOD as one of eight fintech startups addressing this shift.

What Shadow IT 2.0 Looks Like

The old shadow IT was about rogue software installs. The new version is more powerful and harder to see. Business teams are creating apps, automations, and AI workflows using Microsoft Power Platform, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, custom scripts, and AI agents built in GPT-based environments.

These tools are productive. They solve real problems. But without governance, they also create data flows nobody mapped, compliance gaps nobody documented, and dependencies nobody planned for. In regulated industries like fintech, that is a problem with real consequences.

NEKOD's Role in the Media Session

The Money20/20 Europe Media Session is designed to put promising fintech innovators in front of top-tier journalists and industry leaders. NEKOD presented as a control layer for business-built AI apps: auto-discovering apps and automations, assessing and scoring risk, enforcing governance rules, and mapping to compliance frameworks like DORA and the EU AI Act.

The response from the room confirmed what we have been hearing in enterprise engagements: fintech organizations want governance that keeps pace with how fast their teams are building.

Why Fintech Is Moving First

Financial services has the strongest regulatory pressure (DORA, PSD2, GDPR) and the highest stakes for ungoverned applications. A vibe-coded app that touches payment data, customer records, or transaction workflows carries different risk than an internal dashboard. Context matters, and the same security patterns that appear in individual apps compound when dozens or hundreds are running across an organization.

That regulatory pressure is exactly why fintech organizations are the earliest adopters of structured governance for AI-generated apps.

Key Takeaways

• NEKOD was selected as one of eight standout startups at Money20/20 Europe's Media Session
• "Shadow IT 2.0" is the core challenge: business teams building AI apps and automations faster than governance can track
• NEKOD's platform auto-discovers, assesses, scores, and enforces governance for business-built applications
• Fintech is moving first on AI app governance due to regulatory pressure from DORA, PSD2, and GDPR

Operating in financial services and facing ungoverned AI-generated apps across your organization? Book a Consultation to see how NEKOD's governance platform maps to DORA and your compliance requirements.