r/fintech: rules, karma requirements and posting culture
A mid-sized forum of about 97,000 on payments, banking tech, compliance and crypto rails. Lightly moderated, founder-heavy, and tired of posts that sound like marketing.
Fintech: financial technology · Open on Reddit
- Members
- 97k
- Created
- 2012
- New posts a day
- 7.3
- Comments on a typical post
- 6
- New posts removed
- 11%
The short answer
r/fintech has a karma and account age requirement, but the moderators do not publish the numbers. AutoModerator removes posts and comments from accounts that fall short, and it applies to comments too. Past that gate the room is open: about 88% of posts in our sample stayed up. Self-promotion is allowed if you say at the top that the thing is yours. Expect a text-first crowd of builders and operators who will tell you when a post reads like a press release.
Who posts here
Most threads assume you know what KYC, a PSP, interchange, safeguarding and settlement are, and the better ones get into licensing regimes and reconciliation detail. But the door is not closed to newcomers. Students asking about internships, courses and whether a degree is worth it stay up and get replies. A vague beginner question gets a few short answers, not a removal.
- Founders and engineers building payment, banking or wallet products, often asking how others handle a specific failure.
- Operators in compliance, payments operations and finance teams comparing providers and processes.
- Business owners with a payments problem, such as a high-risk merchant looking for a processor or someone moving money across borders.
- Students and career changers asking how to get in.
- Vendors and their staff posting analysis, some disclosed and some not.
Karma and account requirements
What it takes to get a post through in r/fintech.
| Karma | A minimum exists and is not published. AutoModerator removes posts and comments from accounts below it.Mods' wording: “your account doesn't meet our karma and account age requirements” |
|---|---|
| Account age | A minimum exists and is not published. It is checked together with karma, on comments as well as posts.Mods' wording: “This comment was removed, because your account doesn't meet our karma and account age requirements.” |
| Post flair | Every post in our sample had one. Discussion covers about 58% and Ask the Community about 29%. News & Analysis and Crypto / DeFi make up most of the rest. |
| Self-promotion disclosure | If you wrote or built the thing you are posting, say so at the start of the post.Mods' wording: “mention that you wrote it it in the beginning of the post” |
| Links | Allowed, but only about 5% of posts are links. Press releases, funding announcements and top-ten lists are not wanted.Mods' wording: “Try to stay away from press releases and top 10 lists.” |
What AutoModerator says
The moderators' bot leaves these messages on posts. They are the closest thing to an official statement of the thresholds.
This comment was removed, because your account doesn't meet our karma and account age requirements.
This submission was removed, because your account doesn't meet our karma and account age requirements.
What you can post
| Post type | Subreddit setting | Share of recent posts |
|---|---|---|
| Text | Allowed | 87% |
| Link | Allowed | 5% |
| Image | Allowed | 6% |
| Video | Allowed | 2% |
| Poll | Allowed | <1% |
Post flairs in use
- Discussion 58%
- Ask the Community 28%
- News & Analysis 8%
- Crypto / DeFi 5%
- cofounder <1%
- looking forward to connect <1%
What happens to a new post
Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.
- Stayed up88%
- Removed by Reddit's filters9%
- Removed by moderators3%
- Deleted by the author1%
Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.
What happened when we posted here
We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.
- Stayed up
- 100%
- Removed by Reddit's filters
- 0%
- Removed by moderators
- 0%
- Period
- October 2025 to July 2026
The rules, in the mods' words
- 1
Be nice to others
Just be nice and play nicely together. The world doesn't need more jerks.
- 2
No discreet self promotion
We don't like discreet self promotion. If you think you have written something which you think is beneficial to the community, mention that you wrote it it in the beginning of the post.
- 3
Keep quality high
A lot of news and content which comes out in the Fintech world is spammy and low quality. Try to stay away from press releases and top 10 lists.
These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.
The culture
r/fintech describes itself as a place to discuss how technology is changing financial services, and it has more than doubled in size since 2024. The sidebar was written for a link-sharing forum, but the room is now about 87% text. Posts are longer than average at around 110 words, half of the titles are questions, and the median thread gets six comments.
The subject matter is the plumbing: payment processors and holds, card issuing economics, open banking data quality, reconciliation across providers, licensing rules in the UK and EU, stablecoin payouts. AI agents that can move money are a running topic, usually framed as what breaks, such as a retry loop that almost paid a refund twice. Career questions from students and operations staff run alongside.
The live complaint is about the posts themselves. Commenters say the feed reads like people practising a corporate voice, that statements get posted with no question attached, and that low-history accounts are padding threads with AI replies. Moderation is light, with only about 3% of posts removed by moderators, so the pushback comes from readers. A post that sounds like content marketing may stay up, but the thread will say so.
What lands
- A question aimed at people doing the work, such as where AI is useful day to day for those employed in fintech.
- A sharp observation about how a product category is changing, argued in your own words and open to disagreement.
- A concrete operational problem with the setup described: which providers, what the files look like, where the numbers stop matching.
- A narrow regulatory change explained in a few lines, ending with a real question about what it means.
- An honest ask for a provider recommendation in a hard category, with the constraints stated.
What gets removed or ignored
- Posts and comments from accounts under the unpublished karma and age threshold. This was by far the most common AutoModerator action in our sample, almost all of it on comments.
- Product launches written as a discussion, including ones where the author said they were the developer.
- User research and survey requests.
- Long news summaries and analysis pieces that read like a published article.
- Rehashed press releases and list posts, which the rules ask you to avoid.
The unwritten rules
- End with a real question. Posts that state a fact and stop get called out as announcements to a wall.
- Write plainly. Polished, evenly structured posts are assumed to be AI or marketing, and commenters say so in the thread.
- Disclosure helps but does not guarantee anything. Some disclosed builder posts stay up and some are removed. The ones that stay teach something without needing the product.
- Comments are fairly long, around 36 words, and about 3% carry a link. A reply that ends by naming the commenter's own product is easy to spot.
- For anything touching licensing or money transmission, expect to be told to hire a lawyer. People will discuss the shape of the problem, not give you a ruling.
Self-promotion
The rule is narrower than a ban. It forbids discreet self-promotion and asks that you say you wrote the thing at the beginning of the post, and the submit text says the mods tend to reject overly self-promotional links. In practice disclosed builder posts are a regular part of the feed, and several in our sample opened with a line saying who built the product. The moderators still removed a few I built posts and research requests, so disclosure is the minimum, not a pass. What works is a post that carries a lesson or a real question, with the product as context.
How people write here
- Typical post length
- 113 words
- Typical title length
- 10 words
- Titles phrased as a question
- 50%
- Typical comment length
- 36 words
- Comments that include a link
- 2%
- Posts that carry a flair
- 100%
When people post
- 0:00 UTC, 8
- 1:00 UTC, 8
- 2:00 UTC, 3
- 3:00 UTC, 7
- 4:00 UTC, 8
- 5:00 UTC, 13
- 6:00 UTC, 12
- 7:00 UTC, 12
- 8:00 UTC, 23
- 9:00 UTC, 29
- 10:00 UTC, 12
- 11:00 UTC, 25
- 12:00 UTC, 22
- 13:00 UTC, 20
- 14:00 UTC, 20
- 15:00 UTC, 28
- 16:00 UTC, 26
- 17:00 UTC, 20
- 18:00 UTC, 31
- 19:00 UTC, 24
- 20:00 UTC, 15
- 21:00 UTC, 14
- 22:00 UTC, 11
- 23:00 UTC, 9
New posts by hour of day, UTC.
The regulars
The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.
Most active posters
- u/Shufti-Global10 posts
- u/Abject_Ask50009 posts
- u/No_Bicycle_35664 posts
- u/FinexerOfficial4 posts
- u/SearchStatus58514 posts
Most active commenters
- u/Shoddy_Peanut73209 comments
- u/MaythuDieghton_836 comments
- u/Baide-Warframe606 comments
- u/Creative-Donut-51305 comments
- u/realYieldinglyremote5 comments
Top keywords
The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/fintech.
- fintech 101 posts
- bank 73 posts
- payment 77 posts
- stablecoin 26 posts
- payments 62 posts
- banking 41 posts
- financial 55 posts
- transaction 38 posts
- compliance 41 posts
- banks 28 posts
- stablecoins 15 posts
- finance 38 posts
- account 59 posts
- data 65 posts
- kyc 20 posts
- fees 31 posts
- product 62 posts
- crypto 24 posts
- fraud 22 posts
- provider 31 posts
- fintech product 9 posts
- teams 37 posts
- money 56 posts
- fiat 11 posts
- reconciliation 17 posts
- infrastructure 30 posts
- settlement 17 posts
- funds 22 posts
- payouts 17 posts
- customer 39 posts
- lending 12 posts
- risk 28 posts
- fintechs 9 posts
- api 32 posts
- providers 22 posts
- onboarding 20 posts
- stable.com 7 posts
- payment infrastructure 7 posts
- aml 9 posts
- wallet 16 posts
Recurring topics: ai, fintech, payment, bank, card, looking for, payments, finance, data, stablecoin.
Posts that did well
- anyone tried Whop’s new neobank setup?29 upvotes · 10 comments · Ask the Community
- For people actually working in fintech: where is AI genuinely useful in your day-to-day work?29 upvotes · 17 comments · Discussion
- Corporate cards are becoming permission systems with a sprinkle of rewards27 upvotes · 17 comments · Discussion
- What happens to a refund when you paid with USDT?25 upvotes · 12 comments · Crypto / DeFi
- Why have the people here gone into fintech20 upvotes · 38 comments · Ask the Community
- Looking for a reliable high-risk payment processor18 upvotes · 20 comments · Ask the Community
- Is FinTech Master's worth it?11 upvotes · 27 comments · Discussion
- For anyone deploying AI agents that touch money or customer decisions: how do you prove to compliance what the agent did, and why?10 upvotes · 15 comments · Discussion
Growth
- 201227
- 201353
- 2014131
- 2015486
- 20161.5k
- 20173.7k
- 20186.7k
- 201910k
- 202015k
- 202122k
- 202228k
- 202332k
- 202439k
- 202560k
- 202697k
Related subreddits
- r/technology
- r/fintechdev
- r/coding
- r/InformationTechnology
- r/web3
- r/AZURE
- r/Bitcoin
- r/tech
- r/fintechnews
- r/crypto
Common questions
How much karma do you need to post in r/fintech?
There is a minimum for both karma and account age, but the moderators do not publish it. AutoModerator removes posts and comments from accounts that do not meet it, and in our sample nearly all of those removals were comments. A new or empty account should expect to be blocked until it has some history.
Can I promote my fintech product in r/fintech?
Yes, if you are open about it. The rule bans discreet self-promotion and asks you to say at the start of the post that you wrote or built the thing. Posts that are mostly a feature list or a launch announcement are sometimes removed even with disclosure, so lead with what you learned or a question.
What kind of posts work in r/fintech?
Text posts with a specific question or a clear argument. About 87% of posts are text, most are flaired Discussion or Ask the Community, and half of titles are questions. Payments, compliance, banking infrastructure and careers are the main subjects. Scores are modest, with top recent posts around 30 points, so judge a post by the replies.
Why was my r/fintech comment removed?
Most likely your account is under the subreddit's karma and account age requirement. AutoModerator removes comments as well as posts for this and tells you so, without giving the numbers. Build some history elsewhere on Reddit and try again later.
Data as of October 4, 2026. Numbers come from public Reddit data (the Arctic Shift archive and GummySearch) sampled on this date. Removal share counts posts taken down by moderators, AutoModerator or Reddit's own filters. Banner and icon belong to the community. Moderators change rules without notice, so treat the sidebar as the final word.
