The FinTech50 2016 - Squarespace

The FinTech50 2016 The fifty hottest FinTechs in Europe

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The FinTech50 2016 AimBrain Algomi Barzahlen BehavioSec Behavox Bima Bitnet Blockchain Bought By Many Callsign Cognia Contego Credit Benchmark Digital Shadows Elliptic Ethereum Everledger Fenergo Fidor Bank Five Degrees FundApps InvoiceSharing Iwoca Kantox Kaymera

Knip LendInvest Mambu MarketInvoice Meniga Monetas Number26 Onfido Personetics Pockit Prodigy Finance Property Partner QuanTemplate Raisin RateSetter Ravelin Revolut Spotcap Suade Sybenetix SynerScope Tradle Traxpay WeaveWorks Yoyo

The Hot Ten Brolly Clearmatics Lattice Mondo Moo.la OptioPay Ormsby Street Savedo Setl Squawker

The FinTech20 Hong Kong 8 Securites Aidyia AMP Credit Technologies APrivacy AsiaPay Cashyou Currenxie Demystdata Ibox InvestLab Ironfly Lenddo Monexo MoneyHero Neat PassKit Prive Quantifeed WeLend Xnotes

The FinTech20 India Bank Bazaar BetterPlace Safety Solutions CitrusPay Coverfox Ezetap Ftcash FundsIndia Get Fiscal IndiaLends Juspay Ketto Milaap Paynear Paytm Razorpay RedCarpet Scripbox TradersCockpit Unocoin Wishberry

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Meet our 2016 selection panels The 44 industry experts we invited to select this year’s FinTech50, FinTech20 Hong Kong and FinTech20 India Mariano Belinky Santander InnoVentures Abdul Guefor Intel Capital Oliver Bussmann UBS

Patrick Mang HSBC Albert Cheng Eight Roads Ventures

Chris Wilson RBS

Jan Hammer Index Ventures Eileen Burbidge Passion Capital

Travers ClarkeWalker Fiserv

Santiago Tenorio American Express

Nadeem Syed Misys Adrian Seto Accenture

Chris Skinner The Financial Services Club

Menno Van Leeuwen ABN AMRO

Eddie Harding ICON Corporate Finance

Dave Birch Consult Hyperion

Rob Moffat Balderton Capital

Connie Leung Microsoft Michael Treskow Accel Partners

Christian Erlandson Dun & Bradstreet

Don Ginsel Holland FinTech

Melissa Guzy Arbor Ventures

Fearghus Barkley FinTech50 Research Conny Dorrestijn Shiraz Partners

Pierre Suhrcke Acorus Capital

Laurent Nizri Alteir Consulting

Sven Korschinowski KPMG

Navin Honagudi Kae Capital

Priscilla Law InvestHK

Alex McCracken Silicon Valley Bank

Nasir Zubairi Influencer

Michael Leung China CITIC Bank International

Julie Lake The FinTech50 & FinTechCity

Alex Batlin UBS

Nicky Cotter The FinTech50 & ICON Corporate Finance

Herman Lam Cyberport

Mark Whitcroft Illuminate Financial

Roy Vella V2 Ltd

Nadia Crandall Harvard Business School Alumni Angels London

Chipper Boulas Firestartr

Claudia Bate Bell Pottinger

James Savage Hendale Capital

Ivan Yip UKTi HK

Phil Zamani Influencer

Shaloo Kulkarni Syntheo

Anju Patwardhan Standard Chartered

Himanshu Vyas CISeed

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The future is wide open – let’s build it together!

Introducing The FinTech50 2016

Our Partners

Julie Lake and Nicky Cotter Founders, The FinTech50

Microsoft offers you the technology, support and services to help your startup succeed. If you are working on your own software product or service and your company has been registered less than 5 years ago, you may be eligible to join Microsoft’s BizSpark program and get access to: • Free software for 3 years, including Windows, Visual Studio, Office and many more. • Free Azure cloud services to build your business by utilising the power of machine learning, data stream analytics and blockchain. • Free training and support from Microsoft.

This year’s FinTech50 can take a moment to feel very pleased with themselves. With 1200+ innovators on our long-list, up from 800+ last year, this was the most hotly contested FinTech50 in its four-year history. To clarify, we don’t rely on ‘entries’ to create it. The FinTech50 is our tribute to the best in the sector, not the best at entering awards, so we undertake research throughout the year to make sure that it is truly representative of European innovation. We also invite some of the biggest names in FinTech to select their final 50. And we can vouch for the fact that they approached this very tall order with the meticulousness you would expect of the leaders in the field. This is very much their FinTech50. And it looks rather different to 2015. Thirty FinTechs are new to this year’s list. It features more companies in sectors such as security, compliance and risk. And one or two names might not be familiar. But whatever their vintage, provenance or specialist niche, this year’s 50 have one thing in common: customers and a growing number of them. Not only have they all built and shipped an innovative product or service; people and businesses are actually using their products and services. We also introduced two new features this year:

Ready to start?

Find out more at microsoft.com/startups or say hi at [email protected]

Microsoft BizSpark

Country partners

The FinTech50 Hall of Fame (18) The FinTech20s Hong Kong (34) and India (36) We hope you enjoy reading this Yearbook as much as we enjoyed creating it. Thank yous must go to our partners and sponsors, who are the rocket fuel behind the FinTech50; to our panels around the world for their time and priceless insights, and to our endlessly enterprising FinTech community around the world. You all know who you are. fintechcity.com

@TheFinTech50

The FinTech50 VIP reception hosts

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Algomi

Key people

CEO & Founder: Stu Taylor Co-Founders: Rob Howes, Usman Khan, Michael Schmidt FOunded

2012 Sectors

Trading HeadQuarters

“Has the bubble burst in FinTech? I don’t think so because the fundamentals remain the same. Insight +Idea +Action = Innovation and FinTechs bring these to banks at a speed they still struggle to keep up with. So collaboration rather than unbundling will be the order of the day, deflation of the bubble or not.”

AimBrain

FOunded

Sectors

Security HeadQuarters

London, UK on twitter

@AimBrainHQ on The web

aimbrain.com

Richard Peers, Director Financial Services Industry, Microsoft

The FinTech50: innovation

on twitter

@Algomi_Ltd on The web

algomi.com

Key people

CEO & Founder: Andrius Sutas Co-Founder: Alesis Novik

2014

London, UK

Killing Passwords AimBrain’s vision of the future is that any device you interact with will know that it’s actually you, without the need to remember passwords. Founded in Edinburgh by a team of ex-Toshiba, Google, ARM, European Space Agency and CERN engineers, its software tracks and learns how a person interacts with mobile devices, from typing speed to how hard they press or where they swipe. This lets banks and payment processors know if their users really are who they say they are.

The Bond Information Network Algomi’s Honeycomb system helps banks create a virtual balance sheet based on actual bond data – including trade information, enquiries, and holdings – and lets buy-side firms see this validated virtual balance sheet at the banks. This information and distribution insight is not available anywhere else. In just 12 months, Algomi signed 150 buy-side firms and 15 banks in APAC, US and EMEA to Honeycomb. Former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer joined as a strategic adviser in March 2016. Commentators say: A much-needed, startlingly simple yet practical answer to one of the corporate bond trading market’s most acute needs: liquidity transparency.

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BehavioSec

Key people

CEO: Neil Costigan Co-Founders: Olov Renberg, Peder Nordström FOunded

Barzahlen

Key people

Co-Founders: Achim Bönsch, Sebastian Seifert, Florian Swoboda FOunded

2011 Sectors

Payments

HeadQuarters

Berlin, Germany on twitter

@Barzahlen on The web

barzahlen.de Reinventing cash Barzahlen makes online shopping, playing or travel booking possible for cash users. Germany’s largest private cashpayment infrastructure, with over 9000 stores, has a vision to replace the classic bank branch and has partnered with German, Number26 to provide customers with a retail-based branch network. Barzahlen is expanding to other industries and sectors and is now actively involved in insurance and telecommunication. By the end of 2015, Barzahlen expanded their retail partner network by adding about 3000 REWE stores.

2007 Sectors


Lulea, Sweden

Behavox

The Token you can’t forget BehavioSec’s algorithm verifies who someone is based on how they naturally interact with their device and delivers instant identity verification, along with continuous authentication. Panel says: Whilst it seems everyone else in biometrics is promoting face, voice, palm, finger and retina recognition, BehavioSec is set to revolutionise the sector by accessing device usage and aggregating a user’s ordinary behaviour into a unique authentication, allowing for an authentication process that is not only super slick but totally invisible to the end user.

Bima

2014

FOunded

2010 Sectors

Insurance

HeadQuarters


@behavox on The web

behavox.com Monitoring Rogue Traders Behavox has good reason to look forward to 2016. The two-yearold business, whose behavioural analysis monitors changes to the way a trader communicates, signed the most technologically committed hedge fund in the market as a client in 2015 and is being courted by investment banks and VCs alike. Currently funded by friends and family, the London business also expanded its team from 9 to 14 and is planning new offices in Singapore and New York in 2016.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Gustaf Agartson

Sectors

Security

Key people

CEO & Founder: John McDonnell Co-Founders: Stephen McNamara, Akif Khan FOunded

FOunded

on The web

behaviosec.com

Key people

CEO & Founder: Erkin Adylov Co-Founders: Slav Slavinski, Roman Zelov, Alex Glasman, Kiryl Trembovolski

on twitter

@BehavioSec

Bitnet

HeadQuarters

Stockholm, Sweden on twitter

@Bimamobile on The web

bimamobile.com Microfinance Pioneer Customers of Bima typically live on less than $10 a day and fewer than half have bank accounts. The Swedish Microfinance pioneer has developed a bespoke portfolio of over 40 microinsurance & mobile health products which it distributes in emerging markets such as Ghana for as little as 35 cents a month using mobile technology and an agent network. Its expansion across emerging markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America has served over 20 million customers in just five years and it currently attracts 500k new customers per month.

2014 Sectors

Payments – Blockchain

Blockchain

HeadQuarters

Belfast, UK on twitter

@BitnetTech

on The web

bitnet.io Bitcoin for enterprise Bitnet is the first Bitcoin payment processor designed for both merchants and PSPs. Founded in Belfast by a highly experienced team, and with offices in the US, Bitnet has already partnered with several payment processors and large e-commerce websites, including Zooz, Limonetik, and Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten. In 2015 it forged its largest partnership yet with PAY.ON, enabling Bitcoin acceptance for over a hundred PSPs globally. Partners say: Merchants benefit from a digital payment method that expands their business to a new customer base, generating a new revenue stream without significant implementation costs.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Nicolas Cary Co-Founders: Ben Reeves, Peter Smith FOunded

2011 Sectors


HeadQuarters

London, UK on The web

blockchain.com Be Your Own Bank Founded in 2011, ‘the world’s most popular Bitcoin wallet’ now has 6 million users, $30.5m funding from investors such as Lightspeed and the title ‘London Scale-up of the Year’. In 2015 the first Bitcoin company to hit 5 million users, doubled the number of transactions processing through its wallets and APIs, opened new offices in London, New York & Luxembourg and was named one of ‘the Best Companies in the World to Work for’.

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Contego

Key people

CEO & Founder: Adrian Black FOunded

2011 Sectors

Compliance, Risk & Regulation

Cognia Bought By Many

Key people

CEO & Founder: Steven Mendel Co-Founder: Guy Farley

Callsign

FOunded

FOunded

2012

2011 Sectors

Sectors

Insurance


HeadQuarters

London, UK

@boughtbymany on The web


on twitter

Key people

CEO & Founder: Zia Hayat

@Callsign on The web

boughtbymany.com

callsign.com

Insurance made social Bought By Many uses the power of the collective – ‘crowdbuying’ – to negotiate better deals from insurance companies for large groups of customers with niche needs. As well as collecting a slew of innovation awards, the social insurance solution now has over 143,000 members over 277 groups, and saves members an average of 18.6%.

Multimodal Biometrics Having someone’s mobile, getting hold of their pin and biometric fingerprint is still not enough to impersonate someone, says Callsign. The platform’s military-grade security, with over 50 analytics captured and processed in realtime, delivers a powerful cyber intelligence capability that provides a clear view of which user, at which location and on what device, is performing a given transaction.

FOunded

2005 Sectors


HeadQuarters


@CogniaDotCom on The web

cognia.com Protecting payment card data Cognia’s secure cloud-compliance solutions help enterprise customers in verticals such as finance, energy, healthcare and retail to capture, record, control, analyse communications and protect payment-card data. Backed by investors that include Vodafone and Swisscom, it was the first company to develop enterprise-grade mobile recording solutions and achieve PCI DSS Level 1 accreditation globally on the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Clients say: Its PCI compliance payment processing and mobile in-network recording solutions are among the best in the market.

HeadQuarters

Abingdon, UK on twitter

Key people

CEO: Stewart Holness Founder: Curtis Nash

Credit Benchmark

@Contego on The web

contego.com

Real Time Fraud Solutions Contego founder Adrian Black worked with the police, AutoTrader, eBay and others to create VSTAG, an industry forum to combat fraud in automotive advertising. Whilst chairing VSTAG, Adrian gained an understanding of sharing data and intelligence to verify entities and highlight fraud risks; this led to a pilot project and was the seed that developed into a first iteration of Contego. With partnerships including IBM, Amazon Web Services, C6 Group, Contego has invested heavily in recent months to strengthen its international data sets. It was accepted into Accenture’s 2016 Innovation Lab cohort and announced two major initiatives: integrating Bureau van Dijk (BvD) international company data; and expanding its Creditsafe offering to cover 20+ markets. Clients say: Fast enough to meet customer demands and secure enough to meet all compliance requirements.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Donal Smith Co-Founder: Mark Faulkner FOunded

2012 Sectors


HeadQuarters


@CreditBenchMark on The web

creditbenchmark.org Collective Intelligence for Global Finance Credit Benchmark brings soughtafter credibility to a credit risk market renowned for opacity. By aggregating and anonymising credit risk estimates of the world’s largest banks, the company creates consensus credit data and analysis that directly reflects the views of banks’ own risk teams. This unlocks the insight of organisations with assets in the trillions and with tens of thousands of credit analysts. Founded in 2014, the London based business raised $20m Series B financing in 2015 and launched its operation in the US. Investor says: Disrupting decadesold ways of risk assessment, and the potential impact on the financial services sector is huge.

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Digital Shadows

Key people

CEO & Founder: Alastair Paterson Co-Founder: James Chapell FOunded

2011 Sectors

Elliptic


London, UK

on twitter

@digitalshadows

FOunded

2013

on The web

“Digital disruption should not be seen as a threat, but rather a healthy challenge, driving change and opening up exciting new possibilities. Far from resisting it, banks should be embracing this opportunity to reach outside their own walls, to work with startups, join innovation platforms and collaborate on new ideas in ways that would of been unfathomable a decade ago.” Oliver Bussman, Group Chief Information Officer, UBS

The FinTech50: collaboration

digitalshadows.com Cyber Situational Awareness Digital Shadows has come a long way since the Accenture Innovation Lab London in 2011, announcing a $14m Series B funding round in February. Its flagship product, SearchLight, is a continuous real-time scan of more than 100 million data sources online and on the deep and dark web – cross referencing customer specific data with the monitored sources to flag up instances where data might have inadvertently been posted online, for instance, or where a data breach or other unwanted disclosure might be occurring. The service also monitors any threat-related chatter about the company, such as potential hackers discussing specific attack vectors.

Key people

CEO & Founder: James Smith Co-Founder: Tom Robinson

Sectors

Payments – Blockchain HeadQuarters


@elliptic on The web

elliptic.co Bitcoin Custody Elliptic Vault is the world’s first insured Bitcoin custody service and the first Bitcoin company to receive a global standard for financial reporting. Its proprietary identity database delivers auditable proof of identity for over 10,000,000 addresses. Clients have used the platform to assess risk on more than $1bn in transactions, generate suspicious activity reports, and prevent fraudulent transactions. Media says: A huge benefit to Bitcoinrelated businesses attempting to decrease risk factors.

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15

Ethereum

FOunded

2014 Sectors


HeadQuarters

Switzerland on twitter

@ethereumproject on The web

Five Degrees

Key people

Co-Founders: Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood

ethereum.org

Everledger

Fidor Bank

Key people

CEO & Founder: Leanne Kemp

FOunded

2015 Sectors

Blockchain

Fenergo

on twitter

Unstoppable Applications Ethereum’s decentralised blockchain and digital currency Ether are becoming widely used tools for building decentralised apps. In January, R3 announced the completion of a distributed ledger experiment involving eleven of the world’s biggest banks, connected on an R3-managed private peer-to-peer distributed ledger underpinned by Ethereum technology. Media says: The founders have built and shipped something genuinely new, extraordinarily ambitious, and intellectually fascinating. That’s much more than most startups can say.

@everledgerio

Bling on the blockchain Everledger uses the technology behind bitcoin – the blockchain to tackle the diamond industry’s expensive fraud and theft problem. A graduate of Barclays’ TechStars’ 2015 London cohort, Everledger has partnered with different institutions across the diamond pipeline, including insurers, law enforcement and the 10 diamond certification houses across the world. In February 2016, it announced a strategic partnership with Britannia Mining to reduce risk and add greater transparency in diamond procurement.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Marc Murphy FOunded

2009

on The web

everledger.io

Key people

CEO & Founder: Matthias Kroner

Sectors

Big Data HeadQuarters

Dublin, Ireland on twitter

@Fenergo on The web

fenergo.com Improving onboarding efficiencies Dublin-based Fenergo helps institutions manage the end-toend regulatory onboarding and entity data management processes. In 2015, it received the biggest ever investment in an Irish Tech ($75m) and announced plans to float on Nasdaq by 2018. This year, the five-year old business announced a 3-way alliance with Markit and kyc.com to deliver a highly optimised client lifecycle management process that will help financial institutions to significantly improve regulatory and onboarding efficiencies and reduce operational costs. It also opened a Singapore Office and signed Nikko Securities as a client.

2009

2009 Sectors

Munich, Germany

on twitter

@fivedegrees

on twitter

@FidorUK

HeadQuarters

Breukelen, The Netherlands

HeadQuarters

on The web

fivedegrees.nl

on The web

fidorbank.uk Banking with Friends With a name derived from the Latin word for trust, Fidor has been reimagining banking since 2009. In Germany, the online bank has around 100,000 clients and more than 300,000 community members who actively participate in the bank’s decision-making processes – a strategy that underpins Fidor’s innovative platform. In September 2015, Celent’s “Model Bank of the Year” launched in the UK. It also announced a current account that is free to open and run and made a contactless debit card available for the first time in 2016.

FundApps

Banking

Sectors

Banking

Key people

FOunded

FOunded

HeadQuarters

London, UK

CEO & Founder: Martijn Hohmann Co-Founder: Bjorn Holmthorsson

Mid is the new Core Matrix, Five Degrees’ next generation banking platform, continues to be a game-changer for banks looking to update their IT infrastructures. The Netherlandsbased business provides corebanking solutions that are lower cost, faster and which deliver more transparency and insight. In 2015, Five Degrees won four major new clients, including its largest account to date, expanding from its native Netherlands into German and UK markets.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Andrew White FOunded

2010 Sectors

Compliance, Risk & Regulation HeadQuarters


@FundApps on The web

fundapps.co Cloud-based regulatory compliance FundApps’ cloud-based regulatory compliance monitoring watches $1tn in assets each day. It also provides a true service rather than just software. An experienced regulatory team stays up to date with all the relevant worldwide regulation coding it into software so clients don’t have to worry about it. And cloud-based services means clients have zero IT spend. FundApps won Europe’s largest listed fund manager as a client last year, as well as one of Canada’s largest pension funds.

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17

iwoca

Key people

CEO & Founder: Chris Rieche Co-Founder: James Dear FOunded

2011 Sectors

Kantox

Lending B2B

HeadQuarters


@iwoca on The web

InvoiceSharing

Key people

CEO & Founder: Jeroen Volk Co-Founder: Vincent Prooij FOunded

2013 Sectors

Office Ops HeadQuarters

Rotterdam, The Netherlands on twitter

@InvoiceSharing on The web

invoicesharing.com Accounting Robot InvoiceSharing provides SMEs with a low-cost invoice accounting platform that doubles as a platform for invoice financing. The Rotterdam-based business’s Accounting Robot won the “most innovative solution for accountants 2016” at the Getwalk event in The Netherlands.

Customers say: 9.6/10 rating over 596 Trust Pilot reviews.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Philippe Gelis Co-Founders: Antonio Rami, John Carbajal FOunded

2011

iwoca.co.uk Instant Working Capital Working capital was in shorter supply when iwoca launched in 2012. The lender has now issued over £70m to 4000+ businesses across the UK, Poland, Spain and Germany with issuance to new customers increasing by 360%. Annual revenue now tops £5m and the London-based company raised $20m equity in a Series B round in July 2015, with a stated ambition to lend to at least a million businesses across Europe within a decade. Last year, the firm opened its creditas-a-service to Alibaba to offer trade finance to small businesses importing from China and iwoca says its goal of lending to at least a million businesses across Europe within a decade defines its ambition.

Knip

Sectors

FOunded

2013

Kaymera

FX HeadQuarters


@Kantox on The web

kantox.com Tomorrow’s FX today Having taken three and a half years to hit $1bn in transactions, the London-based FX management solution hit its next billion dollars in just eight months. With more than 1,700 corporate clients, 70+ employees and growth of over 200% in 2015, Kantox was also the first financial institution to integrate free and automatic SWIFT messaging into its service, allowing complete traceability of funds transferred. It also secured $11m investment in Series B funding. Clients say: Love the simplicity of the platform, their transparent fees and their efficient team.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Dennis Just Co-Founder: Christina Kehl

FOunded

2013 Sectors

Security

HeadQuarters

Tel Aviv, Israel on twitter

@kaymera on The web

kaymera.com Smartphone security Founded by veterans in the cyber industry, Kaymera delivers a highly sophisticated defence system to protect organisations, governments and individuals from all mobile security threats, while supporting freedom of use on popular smartphone models. In February 2016, it announced a $10m funding round as it continues to secure business from tier-one banks, and includes governments, global law firms and family offices among its fast-growing client base.

HeadQuarters

Zurich, Switzerland on twitter

Key people

CEO & Founder: Avi Rosen

Sectors

Insurance

@Knip on The web

knip.ch Mobile Insurance Knip’s mobile insurance manager bundles customers’ insurance products into one app which had seen 330k downloads in Germany and Switzerland by Oct 2015. Customers get an overview of their insurances, see how much they have to pay for each one, when they have to pay and for how long their insurance contract is valid. The Swiss start-up also secured $15.7m Series B, the largest FinTech investment in Switzerland to date. Knip builds its own backend and data science to automatically provide advice on better, cheaper and missing insurance coverage and by being a full stack broker that owns the entire insurance broker process.

Introducing: The FinTech50 Hall of Fame

Klarna

Ten FinTechs have featured on our radar since the days when they could reasonably be called startups. Some have made the list three years in a row; all are still innovating. In recognition of their pioneering spirit and competitive staying power, we felt they deserved their own special place within a list of remarkable game-changers.

eToro For socialising trading eToro created the first global market place for people to trade currencies, commodities, indices and CFD stocks online and today has over 4.5 million users in more than 170 countries. In February, eToro signed a joint venture agreement with SBerbank to provide its social trading services to Russian investors. etoro.com

Here, then, are our founding ten members of The FinTech50 Hall of Fame. We look forward to introducing more in future years.

Adyen The quiet achiever Founded in 2006, Adyen now has a presence on six continents, over 300 employees and provides advanced payment solutions to more than 4,500 customers including Facebook, Airbnb and Netflix. adyen.com

CurrencyCloud For powering global payments Founded in 2012, CurrencyCloud processes in excess of $10bn in payments every year, across more than 40 currencies in 212 countries. It now works with over 125 platform customers and reaches more than 150,000 end-customers. currencycloud.com

Funding Circle For funding SMEs (to the tune of $1.5bn)

For simplifying buying and selling Klarna (which translates as clear) was founded in Stockholm in 2005 with the idea of simplifying buying. Today, it has more than 1,400 employees and is active on 18 markets, serving 45 million consumers and working with 65,000 merchants. It expects revenues to rise by about 40% this year as it moves into the U.S. market. klarna.com

Nutmeg For taking investments online

WorldRemit For reinventing remittances

FundingCircle has lent more than $1.5bn to 15,000 businesses in the UK, USA, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. Since 2010 it has raised $273m of equity capital from some of the most sophisticated investors in the world. fundingcircle.com

Nutmeg launched the UK’s first online discretionary wealth manager in 2011. In 2016 it expects to launch an automated advice service, and announced in March that The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) had granted it permission to carry out regulated advice. nutmeg.com

iZettle

TransferWise

Zopa

For imagining a wallet-free world

For services to the Revolution

For starting the ball rolling in 2004

Following a €60m funding last year, Swedish mPos vendor iZettle announced its move into small business financing by providing SMEs with an advance based on future card sales. izettle.com

One of the original FinTech revolutionaries, TransferWise continues to innovate, opening up services to China this year and forging a partnership with Germany’s Number26. transferwise.com

Giles Andrews launched Zopa in 2004 with the idea of creating the ‘e-bay for money’. To date, the P2P pioneer’s total lending exceeds £1.3bn, with £530m lent last year alone, double the total of 2014. zopa.com

Worldwide, WorldRemit customers send 400,000 transfers every month, with around 25% being moved to mobile money wallets. WorldRemit has raised nearly $200m in funding and in February announced that it has launched in California. worldremit.com

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Mambu LendInvest

FOunded

2013 Sectors

Lending B2C – Property HeadQuarters

“Creating better banking and payment experiences for consumers and businesses is an irreversible trend. We see an abundance of great entrepreneurial talent working to transform financial services through digital products and experiences, building on near ubiquitous access to smartphones and cloud infrastructure. This will dramatically improve the industry and undoubtedly create new giants along the way.” Davor Hebel, Managing Partner, Eight Roads Ventures

The FinTech50: transformation


@LendInvest on The web

lendinvest.com Mortgage Crowdfunding Marketplace LendInvest turned a profit (£3.1m) for the second time in just two years of trading. The UK P2P short-term mortgage lender has lent over $738m since summer 2013 and expects to top $1.4bn in lending during 2016. Significant achievements in 2015 include securing the UK’s largest ever FinTech Series A investment ($30.9m) and receiving the European P2P industry’s first credit rating. LendInvest also maintained its average annual return of c.7% per annum and grew capital inflow across all investor groups (both institutional and retail) from quarter to quarter. Media says: Marks a dramatic shift in the sorts of funding undertaken through peer-to-peer websites.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Eugene Danilkis Co-Founders: Frederik Pfisterer, Sofia Nunes

Key people

CEO & Founder: Christian Faes Co-Founder: Ian Thomas

FOunded

2011 Sectors

Banking

HeadQuarters


@Mambu_com on The web

mambu.com Democratising Banking Mambu began life in 2011 as a service for those not reached by traditional banks. In 2016, it provides core-banking software and infrastructure to financial innovators and retail banks. In the last 12 months it has won 30 new customers and added new functionality, including support for various SME and P2P lenders. As part of a global growth strategy, which saw it attract $8m investment in 2016, Mambu plans to expand its commercial team, increase investment into the platform and open further offices to support growth in Asia and the Americas. Clients say: At the top rank of SaaS offerings in the financial inclusion market.

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23

MarketInvoice

Key people

CEO & Founder: Anil Stocker Co-Founders: Ilya Kondrashov, Charlie Delingpole FOunded

2011 Sectors

Lending

HeadQuarters


@MarketInvoice on The web

marketinvoice.com Trade invoices for finance MarketInvoice lets businesses sign up, sell an invoice and draw down funds on the same day with no contracts, hidden fees or personal guarantees. In 2015, the invoicetrading platform saw its strongest ever month, which saw businesses using the service raise over $30m, and collected nearly £270m in repayments. It also passed key milestones of £600m worth of finance lent, and 10,000 separate loans to UK businesses. Customers now use MarketInvoice on an average of over 13 times per year, and with a default rate of just 1.9%, and a crystallised loss of 0.03%, it is providing strong returns for investors. Investor says: One of the most robust models in peer-to-peer finance and is growing its user base quickly.

Meniga

Onfido

Key people

CEO & Founder: Georg Ludviksson Co-Founder: Viggo Asgeirsson

FOunded

2009 Sectors

Banking HeadQuarters

Reykjavik, Iceland

Monetas

on twitter

@meniga

Rich insights, right time Meniga’s white label software gives banks the building blocks to help speed development of online banking platforms. Already serving 35 million+ consumers in 16 countries, the Icelandic FinTech signed a global framework agreement in late 2015 with Santander Group to implement its PFM solution in 10 core markets. And in 2016 it launched a new service, Dialog, which allows banks to engage with customers using highly personalised advice and product suggestions. Panel says: Successfully riding the wave of understanding customer financial behavioural patterns as they transition and mature from internet-online to mobile centric financial services and banking.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Johann Gevers

2012

FOunded

2013

Sectors

Payments

Sectors

Banking

HeadQuarters

Zug, Switzerland

on twitter

@monetasnet on The web

Key people

CEO & Founder: Valentin Stalf

FOunded

on The web

meniga.com

Number26

HeadQuarters


@Number26de on The web

monetas.net

number26.de

Bitcoin-inspired payments platform Monetas’ advanced cryptotransaction technology uses a Blockchain secured digital notary to enable all kinds of financial and legal transactions, public or private, worldwide. In 2015, the Zugbased business partnered with the Tunisian Post Office and DigitUs to offer nationwide access to instant, secure, and affordable merchant payments and remittances. Monetas is currently working with several African partners to provide coverage to 12 markets in 2016. These partnerships will bring more than 300 million people into a future of financial inclusion.

Bank that FinTech built The smartphone-first German “Bank of the Future” won 80,000 users within one year of launch and expanded into 6 new European territories. The digital bank is already defying a key FinTech trend by “re”-bundling, forming strategic partnerships with other FinTechs, including Barzahlen and TransferWise. Tieups with other financial services are on the cards, as Number26 looks to become an essential financial gateway across Europe.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Husayn Kassai Co-Founders: Eamon Jubbawy, Ruhul Amin

Personetics

FOunded

FOunded

2012

2010 Sectors

Sectors


Analytics

HeadQuarters

London, UK

on The web

HeadQuarters

Tel Aviv, Israel on twitter

on twitter

@Onfido

Key people

CEO & Co-Founder: David Sosna Co-Founder: David Govrin

@personetics on The web

onfido.com

personetics.com

Verify anyone, anywhere Onfido’s technology enables companies to carry out remote reliable background checks. For developers, its innovation lies in being able to quickly integrate these services with apps or websites, allowing developers to easily add background checking. The London-based business now employs 72 people across offices in London, San Francisco, and Lisbon – and has over 625 customers, including Onefinestay, Deliveroo and the NHS.

Personalised insights The Personetics Predictive Analytics platform empowers banks to analyse vast amounts of customer data on-the-fly to accurately identify and anticipate individual customer needs. In January, the Tel Aviv based company with offices in London and New York announced that it had signed several seven-figure contracts with major global banks and card issuers that will extend the deployment of its personalised digital banking technology to over 15 million users.

Client says: They have built their own proprietary document scanning software which is complemented by a range of other checks to ensure that high match-rates can be returned in record time. It really is the best of both worlds.

Personetics say: The banks we are working with are seeing an impressive lift in satisfaction and engagement rates as a result of delivering personalised insights and advice to their digital customers.

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25

Property Partner

Pockit

Key people

CEO & Founder: Virraj Jatania

FOunded

2014

FOunded

2013

Sectors

Crowdfunding

Sectors

Banking HeadQuarters


@PockitPrepaid on The web

Prodigy Finance

HeadQuarters


@prop_partner on The web

Key people

pockit.com

Banking the unbanked Pockit provides underserved and unbanked consumers in the UK an account into which they can get salary/benefits paid or fund with cash at 28,000 locations in the UK. A card allows them to transact online and on the high street, pay bills and share money with friends/family. The London-based business now has 60,000 customers and processed £30m in 2015 – a year which saw it grow 500% on almost every metric: customers, money in, money out, balances held on account and revenue. Pockit also signed distribution partnerships with two housing associations in the UK and one of the largest recruitment companies to allow its temporary contractors (200,000) to get paid into Pockit accounts.

2007

CEO & Founder: Cameron Stevens FOunded

Customers say: Trust Pilot score: 7.2 from 573 reviews.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Dan Gandesha

Sectors

Crowdfunding

HeadQuarters


@ProdigyFinance on The web

prodigyfinance.com Borderless postgraduate student loans With $140m disbursed to date and 4000 students funded, Prodigy Finance considers itself a social enterprise. 75% of its student borrowers come from the developing world and 34% from BRIC nations alone. The majority return to their home countries after graduation, bringing back global business networks and learning to develop their home regions. So far, Prodigy Finance has funded at least 8 entrepreneurs who have created jobs in, India, Canada and the UK.

propertypartner.co Building a global property stock exchange Property Partner allows anyone to invest in an individual property of their choice, with as little or as much they wish, so that they can own a share, receive rental income and access capital growth. As of March 2016, the London based business, just over 12 months old, had crowdfunded 170 properties with a total of more than £25m invested on the platform. Over £4m had been invested on its unique secondary market, which allows investors to trade property shares with other investors, and exit the market at a time and price of their choosing. Investors say: Already one of the most active buyers in the UK residential market. Investors earn an estimated return of 13% per annum, after fees, free from all the hassles of conventional buy-to-let.

QuanTemplate

Key people

CEO & Founder: Adrian Rands Co-Founder: Marek Nelken FOunded

2011 Sectors

Insurance HeadQuarters


@QuanTemplate on The web

quantemplate.com Insurance industry expertise with hedge fund technology Backed by Allianz and Anthemis Group, and formed by experienced re-insurance executives, QuanTemplate emerged from Barclays Techstars’ first cohort in 2013 and secured $7.8m Series A investment September 2015. Through QuanTemplate’s secure web-based platform, underwriters and brokers can conduct all operational activities required to trade in the $4.6tn insurance market (6.7% of global GDP), while optimising their risk in real-time, all the time. Director Says: QuanTemplate’s dedicated insurance software will assist in unlocking the enormous wealth of data that its clients hold, and transform the analytics process.

27

“For a while FinTech has had a vision of unbundling banks but now banks have a vision of rebuilding FinTech. As a result, we are seeing a new hybrid structure where some bank services are being substituted by technology, but most are being augmented by FinTech. The bottom line is that we are building the open sourced bank for the Internet of Value, or ValueWeb for short. An open sourced bank uses AI, cloud, analytics, APIs, apps, devices and more to allow proactive, predictive, non-stop, real-time personalised financial management. What a far cry from the bank of yesterday which, in most cases, is still the bank of today.” Chris Skinner, best selling author of Digital Bank and new book ValueWeb

The FinTech50: personalisation

Raisin

Key people

CEO & Founder: Tamaz Georgadze Co-Founders: Frank Freund, Michael Stephan FOunded

2013 Sectors

Savings HeadQuarters


@weltsparen, @raisin_EN on The web

weltsparen.de Raise your interest It took SavingGlobal 15 months to get its first two banks onboard. Now it has more than 25,000 registered clients with more than €700m in deposits, and 12 partner banks from 10 countries with more than 60 products. The first online marketplace for European deposits, Raisin offers customers better deposit rates than an average bank, and gives banking partners from the EU/EEA access to Europe’s largest savings pool. Using onetime customer identification, a single online banking interface and a selection of reliable, stable product providers, the Berlin-based business will expand into Europe in 2016 under the Raisin brand, whilst retaining the Saving Global (Weltsparen) name in Germany.

RateSetter

Key people

CEO & Founder: Rhydian Lewis Co-Founder: Peter Behrens FOunded

2010 Sectors

Lending B2C

HeadQuarters


@RateSetter on The web

ratesetter.com Making Today Pay Investors have lent over $1bn through RateSetter, establishing it as one of the most successful platforms in its field. In 2016 it also became the first marketplace lender to publish details of how its Innovative Finance ISAs will pay when they launch in April 2016. The Innovative Finance ISA is a new form of ISA which gives lenders access to tax-free returns from the money lent via a P2P site. RateSetter has four different products offering terms ranging from one month to five years with interest rates of up to 5.7%. Customers say: TrustPilot score of 9.8 from 1000+ reviews.

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29

Revolut

Ravelin

Key people

CEO & Founder: Martin Sweeney Co-Founders: Mairtin O’Raida, Leonard Austin, Nick Lally FOunded

2015 Sectors

Security

HeadQuarters


@ravelinhq on The web

ravelin.com Fraud detection for the on-demand economy Ravelin examines visitor and payment data in real time, telling systems which customers to allow, prevent or flag for review. From an idea in January 2015, Ravelin has acquired 13 staff, 2 rounds of funding totalling £1.6m from leading FinTech investors, and a customer base of 12 companies, including some of the leading names in the on-demand economy. On the technical front Ravelin has built a super-scalable platform on the cloud, and developed ML models that are reducing fraud by over 50% MoM.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Nikolay Storonsky Co-Founder: Vlad Yatsenko

2014 Sectors

FX HeadQuarters

Spotcap

@RevolutApp

Mobile Foreign Exchange Revolut’s mobile foreign exchange makes travel money a thing of memory – together with the fees that accompany it. The free (for now) service offers foreign currency exchange at the interbank rate, combining a card + app available across 23 currencies. The Revolut app also has a host of applications for those sending money overseas. As of January 2016, 81,000 users across 150 countries had transacted $182m, saving approximately $15m between them. Revolut also topped Which? Magazine’s chart for the best FX rates. Investors say: An exceptional team solving a major pain-point for consumers all over the world, and they’re doing it with an extremely elegant, mobile-first user-interface.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Toby Triebel Co-Founder: Jens Woloszczak

on The web

revolut.com

CEO & Founder: Diana Paredes Co-Founder: Murat Abur

2014 Sectors

FOunded

2014

Sectors

Lending

HeadQuarters

Berlin, Germany


on The web

spotcap.com Real-time short-term loans Spotcap assesses the real-time performance of businesses to grant short-term credit lines and loans to SME businesses. The company uses credit-scoring technology that directly evaluates real-life business data to provide fast and flexible financing. Headquartered in Berlin, with local offices in Madrid, Amsterdam, and Sydney, the Rocket internet-backed company raised its third funding round in 18 months when it secured €31.5m in February to further fuel international expansion.

Sybenetix

London, UK

FOunded

2011

on twitter

@SuadeLabs

Sectors

Analytics

on The web

suade.org RegTech is a thing City regulatory experts believe Suade’s platform could revolutionise the entire process chain of regulation from publication to implementation. Founded by Diana Paredes (ex Barclays) and Murat Abur (ex Nomura), Suade designed its technology specifically around regulatory concerns, allowing banks to achieve continuous compliance, manage their costs and easily conduct analysis. Suade’s software also aims to help smaller banks, which are disproportionately hit by regulatory costs.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Taras Chaban Co-Founder: Wendy Jephson

HeadQuarters

on twitter

@SpotcapGlobal

Key people

FOunded


SynerScope

Suade

FOunded

HeadQuarters


@sybenetix on The web

sybenetix.com Cracking the behavioural code Compliance teams use Sybenetix Enterprise Behavioural Analytics to analyse all trades and unusual behaviour, automatically flagging and investigating suspicious activities. In the past year, the London-based FinTech has added tier-one banks and the world’s largest hedge fund to its client base. It also secured a coveted place on Accenture’s Innovation Lab in Hong Kong.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Jan-Kees Buenen Co-Founder: Danny Holten FOunded

2011 Sectors

Analytics

HeadQuarters

Eindhoven, The Netherlands on twitter

@synerscope on The web

synerscope.com Illuminating Dark Data Big Data pioneer SynerScope sees data as a means, not an end. The Netherlands-based business is winning clients in Banking, Insurance, and Cyber Security and has partnerships with Amazon, Google, SAP and Dell. SynerScope develops technology stacks designed to deal with the evergrowing variety of structured and unstructured data and partnered with Hortonworks for Hadoop. Panel says: One to watch as its technology and capabilities get tested by some of the larger banks and insurance service providers.

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31

Traxpay Tradle

Key people

CEO: John Bruggeman Founder: Markus Rupprecht FOunded

Key people

CEO & Founder: Gene Vayngrib Co-Founders: Ellen Katsnelson, Mark Vayngrib FOunded

2014 Sectors

Blockchain HeadQuarters


@tradles on The web

tradle.io KYC model on blockchain Tradle puts the user in control of their KYC process and data using the blockchain. An alumnus of StartupBootCamp’s FinTech Accelerator, Tradle launched its first app, Trust in Motion (TiM), to allow users to start a secure line of communications and go on-therecord to exchange documents, verifications, attributions and agreements. Resulting records are stored securely and irrevocably with global permission-less access and high resilience to hackers, spying and take down demands. Tradle claims to be the first solution to put the user in control of their KYC process and data, and allow banks to make that process and data easily auditable to regulators.

2012

WeaveWorks

Sectors

Payments HeadQuarters

Frankfurt, Germany on twitter

@Traxpay on The web

traxpay.com Real money moved in real time Traxpay moves real money in real time, delivering the rich data businesses need to get transparency and control over their transactions. It is integrated directly into existing ERP, purchasing and invoicing systems, enabling a complete endto-end solution for B2B transactions. Traders on B2B networks using its solution can change any and every element of a payment transaction at any stage of the process, from the moment a payment instruction is initiated, straight through to final settlement and clearing. Industry says: Its approach to deliver dynamic payments is more than a buzzword; it’s how their team has designed its platform to enable the delivery of dollars and data between businesses anywhere, any place, and in real time.

Key people

CEO & Founder: Alexis Richardson Co-Founder: Matthias Radestock FOunded

2014 Sectors

Open Source

Yoyo

FOunded

2013 Sectors

HeadQuarters


@weaveworks on The web

Key people

CEO & Founder: Alain Falys Co-Founders: Michael Rolph, Dave Nicolson

Mobile Payments, Loyalty Programs HeadQuarters


@yoyowallet on The web

weave.works

yoyowallet.com

Networking Containers London-based Weaveworks enables dev/ops teams to create, monitor and control microservices without lock-in to one specific container platform. Weave stands the traditional infrastructurecentric model on its head. Instead of provisioning infrastructure and then fitting applications to it, Weave starts with an application and moulds the necessary infrastructure around it.

Payments and rewards rolled into one Yoyo lets users automatically collect points and stamps without the hassle of having to think about it. Users instantly receive vouchers for rewards and in-app purchases, and get digital receipts sent straight to their phones. For the retailer, Yoyo provides insight and the integrated marketing tools they need to reach targeted customer segments, drive sales, increase revenue, and offer an elevated customer experience. Yoyo Wallet is the fastest growing and largest multi-retailer mobile wallet in the UK and recently won Retail Systems’ 2015 Mobile Technology System of the Year. In July 2014, Yoyo was named as one of the Top 10 hottest startups in London by WIRED UK magazine.

Our panel put it this way: For banks to continue to play a leading role in the increasingly mobile and smartphone centred world of their customers, containerisation will be one of the principle application models they need to adopt. Weaveworks is developing technologies that will greatly assist in this and is “one to watch.”

The Hot Ten: this year’s ones to watch

OptioPay HeadQuarters

on The web

optiopay.com OptioPay is an online payment platform that increases payments by offering higher-value gift cards as a payment method. The Berlin-based startup is backed by international venture capitalists and banks and now has a team of 30.

With over 1200 companies on our master list, there is room to look to the future. So this is our watch list: ten hot FinTechs who, in our view, will be the ones to look out for in 2016.

Clearmatics HeadQuarters


clearmatics.com Clearmatics is developing nextgeneration clearing machines for financial OTC markets. Its blockchain platform brings together custodians and endusers on a single platform, where members can settle securities trades and automate the performance of derivatives and other financial contracts using Clearmatics’ Decentralised Clearing Network (DCN) technology.

Brolly HeadQuarters


heybrolly.com Yet-to-launch Brolly is a personal insurance concierge powered by artificial intelligence. Founded by Aviva alumnus Phoebe Hugh, its mission is to tell customers if they are over or under-insured, have duplicate or missing cover, and if they can get the cover they need at a better price.

Berlin, Germany

Lattice HeadQuarters


latticelimited.com Hong Kong UKTI winner now based in London. Fund managers look set to benefit from technology that promises to give them unprecedented control over portfolio construction and management using the Lattice EPD Platform. Customers include Hermes Asset Management that run the giant BT Pension Scheme.

Mondo HeadQuarters


getmondo.com Mondo didn’t quite break the internet, but it did set a record for the fastest crowdfunding campaign in history when it raised £1m in just 96 seconds on Crowdcube. Currently in Public Beta, the digital bank founded by Tom Blomfeld will have no branches and will exist online and as a smartphone app.

Moo.la HeadQuarters


moo.la

Ormsby Street Setl HeadQuarters



ormsbystreet.com

setl.io

With UK SMEs waiting an average 72 days before the invoices they send out are settled, Ormsby Street provides a platform for small firm bosses seeking to limit their exposure to the cash flow issues caused by late payment. SMEs can now check the financial health of potential customers before extending lines of credit to them. Chosen as one of UKTI’s 33 Tech Ambassadors to attend SXSW 2015 in Austin, Texas. Customers include Barclays Bank.

Setl is a UK based institutional payment and settlement infrastructure based on blockchain technology. In December it announced the appointment of Sir David Walker, former Executive Director of the Bank of England, as Chairman.

Savedo HeadQuarters

Paradoxically for the brainchild of a quantum physicist, Moo.la is staunchly in favour of making things simple. With a highprofile founder – former Brookes Macdonald Head of Investment Strategy Gemma Godfrey – and a smart-looking platform whose medium adroitly underpins the message, the yet-to-launch online investment manager is an unequivocal one to watch in 2016.

HeadQuarters

Berlin, Germany on The web

savedo.de Savedo is an online financial marketplace that allows savers to invest in safe and high-return financial products within the EU. Based in the heart of Berlin’s tech-scene, Savedo was one of the first ventures launched by startup incubator Finleap.

Squawker HeadQuarters


squawkertrading.com Squawker provides hightouch negotiation platforms for investment banks, agency brokers, inter-dealer brokers and proprietary trading firms to find liquidity, negotiate and execute trades that are difficult to execute on the order books or in dark pools. The negotiation platform brings together more than 100 sell-side firms, across 13 European countries, to find, negotiate and execute difficult blocks on an anonymous basis.

The FinTech20: Hong Kong Between them, our panels looked at over 500 FinTech companies in India and Hong Kong. And in terms of celebrating the innovation powerhouses across Asia, it was just a start. So we’ll be launching a bigger, more comprehensive view in the shape of a brand new list later this year: The FinTech50 Asia. As the gateway to China, Hong Kong has some big investors in FinTech on its doorstep – Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent. Investment into VC backed FinTech companies in Asia hit $4.5bn in 2015, ahead of the $1.5bn invested in Europe. Two members of our inaugural Hong Kong FinTech20 – both Grand Prize winners – visited the UK in 2015 and as a result have already established offices in London and secured deals with a global technology vendor and a tier-one asset management firm. One, Lattice, also made this year’s Hot Ten (32).

8 Securities

Neat

With $9m in funding, the stock trading and financial management platform provides its Asian customer base with over 15,000 US, Hong Kong and China equities and funds in a single click. Customers can trade in RMB, HKD and USD from one account. 8securities.com

Mobile banking for the Millennial generation that makes sure you keep on top of your spending budget automatically. neat.hk

Aidyia

Cashyou A mobile social app which allows person-to-person payment with no fees, using NFC, QR code or online. cashyou.hk

AI based financial market prediction. The company’s artificial general intelligence (AGI) technology identifies patterns and predicts price movements in global financial markets & then recommends action. aidyia.com

Currenxie

AMP Credit Technologies

Demystdata

P2P FX specialist that provides businesses with cost effective and transparent foreign exchange services. currenxie.com

AMP enables banks and other institutional lenders to profitably offer short-term, unsecured loans to small businesses based upon electronic cash flow and other data points – in both developed and emerging markets. amp-creditech.com

Credit referencing that scores and analyses factors such as customer identity and behavior to provide lenders with an additional mechanism of knowing who their customers are and measuring financial risk and customer value. $5m VC backing & offices HK & NYC. demystdata.com

APrivacy

Ibox

An award-winning FinTech that provides the banking industry with information security and tracking services. aprivacy.com

A mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) company enabling debit and credit card payments through smart phones or tablets. iboxmpos.com

AsiaPay

InvestLab

Winner of The Best Company of the Year for Electronic Payment Solutions & Innovation 2016 by IAIR. mPayment solution and payment gateway vendor AsiaPay brings advanced, secure and cost-effective electronic payment processing solutions and technologies to banks, corporate and SMEs across 12 countries. asiapay.com

A global trading technology platform that gives investors, retail brokerage firms, wealth management businesses and financial institutions highly configurable sophisticated tools for global trading of any equity, option, or commodity. $10m funding from investors including Citibank. investlab.com

Ironfly Technologies A SaaS provider of interactive, realtime data visualisation combined with a multi asset class portfolio, order and execution management system. In March 2016 they partnered with a global vendor of risk management and connectivity software. ironflytechnologies.com

Lenddo Caters to the unbanked with a lack of credit history - the big data company specialises in using non-traditional data for credit scoring and on-line verification to help borrowers not included in the financial system, unlock loans. Operating in HK, The Phillippines, India, Columbia, Mexico. $14m VC backing from Accel, Blumberg and Omidyar Network. lenddo.com

Monexo Innovations A P2P lending marketplace with a focus on transparency and convenience through best-in-class technology. Hong Kong is its first market and its first product is focused on property owners who can borrow against rental income. monexo.co

MoneyHero In less than one year of operations MoneyHero the personal finance comparison platform has partnered with over 75 banks, insurance companies and telco’s. It is the most comprehensive financial comparison service in HK. moneyhero.com.hk

PassKit Mobile wallet marketing and customer engagement technologies for banks and FS companies. Recognised as world-class experts in unlocking new revenue from mobile wallet content, proximity marketing, beacon technology and big data. passkit.com

Prive An integrated wealth management platform and winner of The Asian Private Banker Technology Award 2015 - Best Provider of External Asset Management Solutions. en.privemanagers.com

Quantifeed Digital wealth management solutions / Robo platform offering a white label platform to online brokers, consumer banks and wealth managers. quantifeed.com

WeLend An online low interest lending platform that enables users to borrow money on a personal loan. welend.hk

Xnotes Alliance A peer-to-peer decentralised transaction network using blockchain. In March it partnered with Freecharge which has 1 million users per day. xnotes.com

The FinTech20: India

Ezetap Ezetap enables merchants to accept payments from any mobile wallet through their Ezetap mobile pointof-sale application. In March, Ezetap partnered with mobile Freecharge, which has over 15 million registered users for its Freecharge wallet. ezetap.com

If we wanted to coin a collective noun for Indian FinTech, it might well be a Magnificence. Innovation is abundant across India, and in selecting this list our panel looked at over 350 companies. Their inaugural 20 features a mix of emerging stars as well as those who might be considered members of India’s own FinTech Hall of Fame.

Bank Bazaar

ftcash

BankBazaar’s neutral online marketplace allows users to search for, compare and apply for loans, credit cards and insurance products. BankBazaar generated a funding of $60m in its C-Series funding in July 2015, and announced its international expansion with a move into Singapore in February 2016. bankbazaar.com

ftcash enables offline transactions by aggregating all payment gateways including credit cards, debit cards and mobile wallets under one channel. Founded by former CFO of Deutsche Bank India, ftcash was judged the winner at Paypal’s Start Tank Competition and Village Capital’s FinTech 2015 India Program. ftcash.com

BetterPlace Safety Solutions Founded in January 2015, and with a recent investment by a former Google India head, BetterPlace offers services such as personal, employment, educational, criminal and training verification services using data analytics and application tools. betterplace.co.in

CitrusPay The payment gateway company has over 15 million users. In March 2016, it announced a tie-up with Facebook for cards and net banking transactions. citruspay.com

Coverfox Online insurance portal helping users to search, buy, compare and understand insurance. coverfox.in

Juspay Juspay aggregates services across net banking, wallets and cards and offers payments technology solutions to merchants. Clients incude Amazon India and Snapdeal. The Bengalurubased mobile payments startup secured a $5.8m Series A funding from Accel Partners in February. juspay.in

Ketto Ketto is a social network for NGO/ social enterprises in India, serving as a platform for companies to raise funds, recruit volunteers, and build partnerships domestically and internationally. ketto.org

FundsIndia

Milaap

With 70,000 investors on their platform, FundsIndia is India’s first online platform created specifically for mutual fund investing. Founded in 2009, it believes that every family needs a retirement portfolio, and that most need to save for higher education needs and medium-term goals like buying a house. fundsindia.com

Milaap, which means ‘connecting people’ in Hindi & Urdu, is India’s largest funding platform for social and personal causes. It has shifted its HQ to Singapore, but its operations remain firmly focused on India. milaap.org

Get Fiscal

Founded in 2013, Paynear is a complete payment solution provider, enabling individuals & businesses of all sizes to easily manage their payment activities. paynear.in

Get Fiscal is an invoice and cashflow management platform for small businesses that enables timely working capital loans by connecting to strategic lender partners. getfiscal.in

IndiaLends A digital lending marketplace connecting borrowers and lenders to facilitate an instant loan transaction. Indialends.com

Paynear

Razorpay Bengaluru-based Razorpay’s payment gateway features an easy to use API, quick integration and simple pricing. Founded in 2013, it raised $9.8m in Series A funding last year. razorpay.com

RedCarpet Mobile Wallet with a unique growth strategy around loyalty and coupons. redcarpetup.com

Scripbox Four-year old Scripbox provides an algorithmic decision based on quantitative data about which mutual funds to buy. Last year, it raised $2.5m Series A funding from Accel Partners and angel investors. scripbox.com

TradersCockpit The smart trading and investing portal is ranked India’s #1 in this field with over 50,000 registered users. traderscockpit.com

Unocoin Founded in 2013, Unocoin is India’s first and largest platform for simple, secure and seamless trading/ exchange of bitcoins. unocoin.hk

Paytm

Wishberry

With 128 million registered users, Paytm is the consumer brand of India’s leading mobile internet company One97 Communications. India’s largest mobile commerce platform anticipates 500m users in the next five years. paytm.com

Founded by Anshulika Dubey and Priyanka Agarwal, Mumbai-based Wishberry is a rewards-based crowdfunding platform that enables users to raise funds for their creative and innovative ideas. wishberry.com

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some FinTech subsectors including marketplace lenders, money transfer, robo-advisors and merchant services, many of whom you can find in the FinTech50. Here are three subsectors that we’re watching closely in 2016:

will be 14.8 million more mobile banking users over the next five years. For many banks, their rigorous procurement processes and compliance requirements mean they are unable to contract with the small and agile players of the industry. This has created an enormous gap between innovation, the latest technology and the millions of customers of banks and large financial institutions.

Regtech Compliance with regulation is critical to a FinTech’s success and sustainability. With financial regulation and reporting requirements becoming more complex, a growing industry will emerge to ensure both traditional financial services companies and emerging companies stay on the right side of the regulators. Insurance tech The insurance industry is two steps behind in terms of technology, user experience and customer engagement. We expect to see significant enhancements in the way businesses and consumers monitor risk, get access to and insure themselves.

European FinTech rises to the challenge Alex McCracken, MD Venture Services, Silicon Valley Bank Venture capital investment in FinTech reached an all-time high in 2015, with nearly $14bn invested worldwide, more than double the global 2014 figure. The US accounted for half the 2015 total, and Europe 10% – with the UK and Germany dominating. 64% of investments took place in the second half of 2015, indicating that investment momentum may still be increasing.1 Though the start of 2016 has been tough for global markets, VC investment hasn’t slowed at the rate one might expect – total venture activity so far is up compared to this time last year.2 Savvy US investors have long looked to European businesses for value; and whilst raising funding is always difficult, there will continue to be capital available for good high growth European FinTechs solving real problems for their clients. At Silicon Valley Bank, we’re expecting to see some consolidation in European FinTech this year – mainly when FinTech companies acquire other players in other countries to grow their customer base and territories. This will be particularly true if access to equity continues to tighten. We’re predicting a slowdown in new companies being funded and clear winners emerging in

Infrastructure and payments In December 2015, we asked FinTech leaders where they see the greatest opportunity for disruption in FinTech. The majority (37%) said infrastructure and payments, where Europe is still very much in build mode, so we expect substantial growth here. Government support for FinTech It is heartening to see European governments and regulators supporting the FinTech sector with initiatives such as the Single Euro Payments Area and the Payment Services Directive 2. In addition, regulators are having open dialogue with startups to help them become licensed and compliant. What we’re doing at Silicon Valley Bank We are delighted to support all of the FinTech50 businesses in this guide, some of whom are our clients. In recognition of the difficulties many businesses face in expanding to the US, we are partnering with Stripe to give entrepreneurs around the world access to the basic building blocks for starting a global internet business. Stripe Atlas entrepreneurs will gain access to an incorporated US business entity, a SVB US bank account and access to basic services they’ll need to get started. We also work with MasterCard to provide Commerce. Innovated, a virtual accelerator in key FinTech subsectors. Finally, we’ve just moved our UK Branch to much larger premises on the edge of London’s Silicon Roundabout at the intersection of the City and Tech City to provide European innovation businesses with a hub to meet with potential investors and partners, as well as tap into our industry expertise. Stop by next time you’re in London, we’d love to see you. 1. Source: KPMG 2016 2. Source: Mattermark 2 March 2016

svb.com/UK

@SVB_UK

Bringing startup innovation to big banks Travers Clarke-Walker, CMO, International Group, Fiserv There is a current explosion of activity in the financial technology sector in the UK, led by innovation and also political push factors, with David Cameron’s backing of the Innovate Finance Manifesto: UK 2020 aiming to advance the UK’s standing as a leader in FinTech innovation.

Bridging the innovation gap Banks want to access this external market, but are currently held back. This is where leading technology providers could come into play by providing a link and access point to innovation. Providers could act as a link to the latest technology and create an ‘App Store’ of curated technologies with reduced risk and standardised contractual relationships that they can chose from and adapt. As a suggested model for the industry moving on, leading technology providers could: • • • •

Assist in integration with third parties Be the primary contractual partner Curate the marketplace Set up a standardisation process for connecting to the banks by requiring technology providers to comply with certain measures. This would give banks an assurance that the provider is being backed by a trusted partner

FinTech companies as enablers Leading technology providers are in a very good place to lead the way and step in to provide that contractual and technical bridge by providing an integration access point and capability, almost as a managed service for banks. This will allow: • • •

Existing partners to manage the service The ability to carry out integration and testing Provide a level of accountability as well as ongoing professional services

An investment boom is being driven by the innovation of an ever growing number of FinTech startups. Global investment rates are projected to reach $46bn by 2020, making it evident that the ongoing technology revolution is on track to change our financial habits and the way we interact with financial services and organisations.

Big banks move slowly and have to deal with legacy technology, which can be a barrier to innovation. They are often not able to make the necessary changes within their organisations to be nimble, and that’s why they trust external players to provide them with innovative technologies.

Banks are desperate to keep up with these agile startups to deliver value and stay innovative. However, most are still busy with the onboarding of customers to mobile banking. According to a recent Fiserv report, just over a third (34%) of UK adults are estimated to be currently banking on their mobile. This is expected to almost double to 60% by 2020, meaning there

By using their existing relationship with leading technology providers, financial institutions can solve the issues they have in dealing with smaller organisations and bridge the gap between the latest technology offered by innovative startups and their own customers. fiserv.com

agiliti-fiserv.com

@Fiserv

41

Kemp Little FinTech: Solving technology law issues whilst they’re still in beta_

“Dutch consumers show a high adoption rate in terms of new digital products and services. FinTechs are discovering this and find that Dutch banks are attractive collaboration partners e.g. together with Tink, ABN AMRO created a PFM app. Making music is much more fun together”

www.kemplittle.com/fintech.html [email protected]

Menno van Leeuwen, Manager at ABN AMRO’s Innovation Centre

Dancing to the jazzy sounds of FinTech PMS 279

PMS 368

PMS 151

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PMS GREEN

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FinTech in the Netherlands is finally catching up with the UK. Or Dutch FinTech is perfectly on schedule. As my German teacher used to say: everything in the Netherlands is two years slower, so if the world ends move to the Netherlands and you will have two more years to enjoy. But we are catching up in the Netherlands; we are strong in payments with our own Unicorn Adyen and even a special FinTech envoy “Willem Vermeend” to serve our interests

Helping Fintech companies realise their potential As leading chartered accountants and business advisers to the Fintech sector, we work with our clients to understand their potential and ambitions, and provide all the information and support they need to achieve them. To help you achieve your objectives, please get in touch with us on Twitter or through our website.

@KSFintech

Niels van Rossem, FinTech Strategist at VROA and Don Ginsel, Founder Holland FinTech

www.ks.co.uk/fintech

That said, FinTech is a global playing field so the ambition should not focus on what’s happening within our borders but focus on being a springboard for FinTech companies to enter Europe. The next big thing probably won’t come from Tietjerkstradeel (a small place in The Netherlands). Real success transcends borders, so an open economy like the Netherlands has much to offer to startups and scaleups from all over the world wanting to enter Europe.

Increasingly, cities play an important part in the ecosystem instead of Governments. London instead of the UK is FinTech centre of the world. As financial institutions transform into Tech companies the hotbeds for FinTech will also thrive in nerd cities like Brainport Eindhoven, and High Tech campus Twente. Which also opens the doors to Universities delivering the next generation workforce and next generation consumers, who are often unfairly left out of the ecosystem. A recent study within the Dutch FinTech ecosystem suggests that, right now, there are three main barriers: dated regulations, insufficient knowledge on the side of the regulators and flawed collaboration within the ecosystem. Dutch regulations are among the more strict in the European Union and take a long time to process. Which is not beneficial to startups whose short time-tomarket is essential to success. Next to this, many FinTechs cannot be easily labelled as for example a bank or insurer using the traditional framework. Making it even harder to obtain the required permits. A whole new approach would be beneficial to us all, like the UK has done taking PSD II a step further to API standards to interchange financial data. Could the Dutch Central Bank or even the ECB go as far as to launch ‘a bank out of a box’, so everything is plain vanilla, easy to regulate and would leave companies free to experiment and focus on delivering excellent customer experience by leveraging Tech? Economic growth is largely dependent on an advanced financial infrastructure. It is not so much about jobs in the financial sector, but about an overall strong economy, one that provides employment in the long run. FinTech is not just for the financial industry, it IS the financial industry and therefore essential for a strong economy. So please lose the rigid conductor of the bombastic orchestra and choose the agile sounds of Jazz or even the dexterous skills of a DJ to dance to the sounds of FinTech. vroa.nl

hollandfintech.com

@hollandfintech

43

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

“This is the year sophisticated FinTech comes to the fore in the shape of platforms, infrastructure, solutions that better connect traditional financial services with customers”

Managing Partners

Oscar Wilde John Creaton

Gilbert Carey

FinTech and TMT Industry specialists Over 20 years excelling for top-tier investment banks

a crucial requirement. P2P, robo-advisory, remittances, payments, challenger banks, insurance, even lending, be it B2B or B2C, all require the customer to put a great deal of faith in the service provider. Customer trust can be earned but it is a slow and long journey in FinTech – it is a damper to adoption and growth and why we will never have a ‘Facebook’ miracle in the sector.

Providing technical and commercial due diligence for Investors, Corporate Finance and Family Offices We work closely with FinTech, Technology, Media & Telecom firms on a pre and post deal basis A trusted niche firm with global reach; we partner with our clients wherever needed www.barleycovepartners.com / [email protected]

Trust in adoption, in adoption we trust Nasir Zubairi An estimated $20bn was invested in FinTech in 2015. Governments, investors, banks and entrepreneurs are clamouring to be involved; or, at the least, not left behind. The opportunity is tantalising – a $13tn1 prize, approximately 17% of the world’s GDP. It is perfectly understandable why so many are vying to deliver solutions in FinTech. But I sense the creep of reticence this year, a degree of scepticism from investors and commentators. Several VCs have expressed their concerns about the exit potential of FinTech startups, of customer adoption and of business growth. Others point to the efforts of the banks gathering steam to address their decade long inertia. There has been a raft of rationalisation in valuations over recent months as a result; Lending Club, OnDeck and Square are some examples.

Similarly for investors, trust is paramount; trust in the management team and their awareness of business risks, their understanding of finance, of customer behaviours and switching drivers, and trust in execution. The latter is salient given the realities of addressable markets for FinTech in B2C and B2B. Direct to business/consumer startups are sexy and attract a sizeable premium (both in valuation and press attention/fame) but convincing millions of customers (given the size of fees, that must be the objective) to change their behaviours and put their trust in and money with you is a fool’s errand if you are rational. I think of 2016 as the year FinTech matures and I feel this year’s FinTech50 is representative of this. This is the year sophisticated FinTech comes to the fore in the shape of platforms, infrastructure, solutions that better connect traditional financial services with customers, enabling existing participants to be more profitable and/ or compete more effectively. Selling to financial institutions, though still painful and prolonged, processing existing volumes rather than building from zero, is a solid business model, especially when those institutions are now so keen to work with innovative smaller firms. Cementing competitive advantage through liquidity (becoming the venue of choice for participants in a marketplace) makes for a more robust business. Even when targeting the end customer, having a few trusted institutions as go-tomarket partners, enabling them while building your own credibility, makes better business sense. FinTech still has much to fulfil in the hype cycle but grey whiskers are beginning to show. That is a good thing – a bit of wisdom assimilated to drive FinTech to achieve all that it can. 1. Estimated global financial services revenues – McKinsey.

‘Trust’ is the epicentre of the reality check. Banks still have it, startups don’t. When it comes to money, trust is

@naszub

44

“Companies like Apple are extremely effective at fulfilling people’s needs on one platform and they’ll be more of a threat to incumbent banks than any other ‘challengers’”

Among European banks Spain’s Santander is a leading CVC player with its $100m venture capital fund Santander InnoVentures. Recent investments include settlement expert Ripple and distributed ledger maker Digital Asset. Mariano Belinky, Managing Partner of the fund, says the two deals highlight Santander’s commitment to blockchain technology, a space it believes holds “massive potential”, especially for international payments and settlement.

Corporate venture capital: the big new attraction for FinTech startups? Eddie Harding, Head of FinTech, ICON Corporate Finance There has never been a richer, more varied environment for FinTech entrepreneurs to access funding and with the latest research showing corporate VC accounted for a quarter of all deals across the sector globally last year, conventional institutional venture capitalists are clearly up against a new kid on their block. According to the research by CB Insights, increasingly active corporate VC units – mainly from the financial, telecoms and tech sectors – contributed to funding for FinTech in 2015 ballooning by more than 100% to $13.8bn across 653 deals, up from $6.7bn and 586 deals in 2014.

While FinTech startups might seem an obvious threat for banks many believe tech giants like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon present a much bigger danger, boasting as they do – huge, loyal customer bases and platforms through which they can engage customers and test and deliver new banking services. Belinky reckons if any tech giant were to succeed it would be one of these ‘big four’: “Consumers don’t want separate providers using different apps for each of their individual financial needs. Companies like Apple are extremely effective at fulfilling people’s needs on one platform and they’ll be more of a threat to incumbent banks than any other ‘challengers’.” Much is expected from the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) and that in turn has led to exciting ideas as to how financial services might interface with IoT to offer “Banking of Things” (BoT), whereby data captured by devices is used, for instance, to provide customers with real-time information about their personal finances and customised products and solutions. Belinky is enthusiastic about BoT, especially its costcutting potential for both banking and commerce: “IoT technology will provide banks with real-time access to trade data, eliminating the need for manual checks and paper documentation such as bills of lading, and allow near-instant verification of smart contracts. International trade is expected to grow by 8% per annum until 2020, with associated trade finance revenues growing to $70bn. That represents a massive opportunity for banks to use IoT to streamline trade finance processes and cut operating costs. Improved data and analysis of exposures will also reduce losses and, by increasing the scope of potential clients, increase revenues.” Across the pond Citibank has been one of the most active banking investors in FinTech over the past five years. In considering the potential threat to banks posed by tech giants, Ramneek Gupta, MD of Citi Ventures, concedes they have many enviable strengths. But he cannot see any of these companies mounting a serious threat in their current form as “they lack a whole range of other capabilities – such as underwriting, liquidity management, risk management, regulatory compliance – that are necessary before they can succeed as a global bank.” He has reservations about BoT too, pointing out the need for new capabilities in areas like user and

Mariano Belinky, Santander InnoVentures

machine authentication, security, low cost micro payments infrastructure and banking services that can be accessed by ‘things’ via APIs before that particular vision can be realised. Samsung keen on VR for banking Among the tech giants, Samsung has one of the most active CVC operations, Samsung Ventures. Its forays into FinTech are focused on areas such as IoT and humancomputer interfaces. Albert Creixell, Head of Samsung’s financial services in Europe, says the company’s most important FinTech acquisition so far is LoopPay, a platform that enables Samsung Galaxy devices to perform mobile payments at old point-of-sales terminals that only accept credit cards using magnetic technology. Not surprisingly given that physical technology is core to its business, Samsung is taking IoT very seriously, positioning itself to take advantage of the developing space. It views IoT as four interconnected pillars: people; data; things (such as customer smartphones and employee PCs); and a process that connects these three elements. The process pillar, however, is sorely lacking at the moment: “It is essential to be able to deliver the right information to the right person or machine at the right time so the process pillar is vital,” says Creixell. “Companies which get this fourth element right in banking will succeed with BoT.”

VC FinTech Investment 2015 Globally $13.8bn (653 deals) North America $7.7bn (378 deals) Europe $1.5bn (125 deals) Asia $4.5bn (130 deals) Source: CB Insights

He is convinced tech companies can bring their research, know-how and expertise in user experience to bear on efforts to re-engineer banking: “It’s a service-driven industry. We believe technology companies that are able to build world-class service experiences will be well positioned to succeed and disrupt banking.” Creixell concedes many existing tech giants may not be willing to take on the challenge of becoming regulated banks as this may jeopardize other parts of their business but he points to an interesting, trend breaking development in South Korea as encouraging for techs: “The regulator there has issued a different set of regulations for digital-only banks, making it easier and more enticing for digital groups to become banks. Companies like Kakao, South Korea’s leading messaging group, are already committing large amounts of capital to banking initiatives.” Looking ahead Creixell is convinced that over the near term mobile will have a massive impact on the way consumers pay and track their spending and engage with services. Further out, he sees virtual reality bringing about another major shift in the retail banking experience: “As VR matures and reaches a critical mass it will be more normal to see younger customers using it to deal with complex financial events that in the past involved visiting a branch. As millennials move away from physical branches there will be opportunities to bring new engagement experiences through VR.” Corporate VCs “unfair advantage” is their close proximity to end customers and significant existing distribution channels and consequently institutional VCs can, it seems, only look on as corporates increasingly encroach upon their space. And with no sign of the CVC juggernaut letting up, FinTech entrepreneurs themselves can look forward to an even greater range of choice as they try and decide which of them is their best ally. ICON’s FinTech headline deals include: The sale of Parmenion to Aberdeen Asset Management, the recap of Merit Software from Synova Capital & the funding of SynerScope from Mangrove Capital. iconcorpfin.co.uk

@ICONcorpfin

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