A unicorn startup is one with a $1 Bn in valuation or more. As of December 2019, there were over 400 unicorns around the world, across multiple industries. More recently, the fintech industry has seen monster growth and change.
Owing to the pace of development in the financial technology segment, the way companies and individuals manage, spend, send, and receive money has evolved rapidly.
The world’s Fintech startups are continually leveraging new advances in technology to challenge financial transactions and reshape how the global payments marketplace functions.
These innovations and the demand for easy-to-use and easy-to-integrate financial technology solutions have led to several early-stage fintech startups to receive funding and investments.
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Some of the Top Global FinTech Startups:
Ripple
San Francisco-based Ripple leverages blockchain and XRP cryptocurrency to help customers handle cross border payments faster with lower overhead costs. The company serves leading financial institutions like American Express, PNC Treasury Management, and Spain’s Banco Santander.
Quick Facts:
- As policymakers and regulators took more interest in the company, they opened a new office in Washington, D.C. in October 2019.
- Toward mid-December, the company announced $200 million in Series C funding.
- With the latest funding round, the company is now valued at $10 billion.
According to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, the investment will allow the business to execute against its vision. The investment will also enable them to recruit global talent to meet the market’s changing needs.
Chime
Also San Francisco-based, Chime is one of the fastest-growing challenger banks in the US. In March 2019, CNBC reported that the digital bank had tripled its valuation, crossing the $1 Bn threshold after getting $200 Million in Series D financing. With this funding, Chime plans to “aggressively expand” into other areas of fintech such as lending and credit.
Quick Facts:
- Chime is now valued at $1.5 billion.
- According to Chime CEO Chris Britt, there is a pent up demand for customer-friendly banking services. And, that Chime leverages this by aligning its services with its members’ best interests.
- The company acquires roughly 20,000 customers per month now and will be worth looking at in 2020.
OVO
Ovo is an Indonesia-based e-wallet platform, and now Indonesia’s fifth unicorn, valued at $2.9 billion. After launching as a digital wallet in September 2017, Ovo successfully established itself as a fast-growing payment platform.
Quick Facts:
- Over 110 million people across 300 Indonesian cities currently use Ovo.
- According to Ovo’s Director of Enterprise Payments Harianto Gunawan, cash is a difficult-to-break habit and people will only switch to cashless if it’s safe and easy.
Ovo’s strategy moving ahead is to balance growth and profitability, as the company needs to break even.
Lemonade
Insurance is a $5 trillion market. But, rarely are insurance companies described as delightful or lovable. Lemonade, a millennial-friendly NYC-based insurance startup that has made insurance purchasing a 90-second task. Lemonade uses artificial intelligence, mobile app, and other technologies to revolutionize the centuries-old property insurance process into a youth-friendly and user-friendly consumer product.
Quick Facts:
- Lemonade took $57 million in premium revenue from 425,000 customers.
- To fund the company’s growth in revenue and expansion to all 50 states and Europe, it raised $300 million in April 2019 to reach a valuation of $2 billion.
Lemonade founders Shai Wininger and Daniel Schreiber look forward to keeping their growth intact and increasing revenue with the investment received.
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Checkout
In early May 2019, British fintech startup Checkout.com raised $230 million in Europe’s largest Series A funding for a fintech, attracting a range of investors including Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
Checkout.com provides a payment platform for payment gateway services, payment processing, international acquiring, and risk and fraud tools for global companies.
Quick Facts:
- With a customer base that includes Samsung, Adidas, Virgin, and TransferWise, the company is now valued at GBP 1.5 billion.
- The Switzerland-born founder of Checkout, Guillaume Pousaz said that the investment would help the company roll out products to address their merchant’s increasingly complex needs for payments. The investment will be used to offer their customers the financial solutions and insights they need given market dynamics.
Rapyd
Rapyd, a London-based startup, offers fintech-as-a-service through a single API. In Dec 2019, the company added $20 million to its coffers, reaching a valuation of $1.2 billion. The company had picked up $100 million in October the same year.
Rapyd lets customers tap into a range of financial services including checkout, funds collection, payments, compliance-as-a-service, foreign exchange, fund disbursements, and so on. According to CEO and co-founder Arik Shtilman, the company is gearing up to make some acquisitions as it works the consolidation trend by adding more tools to its suite.
This will help the company get new business very quickly. Two major acquisitions coming for Rapyd will make it an interesting fintech startup to watch in 2020.
HighRadius
This might be the first startup to reach unicorn status in 2020. HighRadius is a SaaS-based financial software solution. The company raised $125 million in Series B funding led by ICONIQ Capital, reaching a valuation of $1 billion and more.
Quick Facts:
- HighRadius is headquartered in Houston, Texas with an office in Hyderabad, India. The founder, Sashi Narahari, an IIT Madras alumnus bootstrapped the company for 11 years before raising its first round of funding in 2017.
The company offers an AI-powered software that automates receivables, payments, and treasury processes. The company plans on accelerating its platform development and geographic expansion with the received funding.
Fintech is playing a game-changing role for businesses and individual users alike. Which fintech unicorn are you rooting for in 2020?
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