Fintech Startups Guide 2022: Learn First About Those Companies Before They Blow Up

Can you think of a more expanding sector than technologies? Fintech in particular has been booming in recent years with great innovations and new companies. There are so many ambitious people in the field that soon established businesses may feel the newbies’ breath close to their necks, or even be outrun.

Here we’ll cover some of the most promising fintech startups you should know about. Learn about those prospective companies while they’re making their first, but steady, steps so later you can boast in front of your crew that you knew them before they got famous!

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What Are Fintech Startups?

Let’s backtrack a little and explain what we’re talking about here. Let’s break down the term:

💡 fintech = financial technology: technology that delivers financial services using innovative methods like mobile banking, investing and borrowing through your smartphone, and cryptocurrencies, among others.

💡 startup = a company or a project undertaken by an entrepreneur to develop and validate a scalable business model.

Here we’ll be talking about some new or developing companies in the financial technology sector to show you what’s been happening in the field in recent years and what you should look forward to.

How Many Fintech Startups Are There?

You may be wondering, fintech seems like a big field (it is), how many fintech startups are there? We can’t tell you the exact live number at the moment, but to provide you with some data, the number increased from 12,200 in 2019 to more than 26,000 in 2021. What this tells you is that the count of emerging companies in financial technologies grew more than two times in three years, and if that isn’t impressive, we don’t know what is.

Don’t get us wrong, we’re not putting quantity over quality. But it’s definitely worth mentioning how fast the amount of new companies is growing, meaning more and more people are interested to provide new financial solutions for our future.

The Top Fintech Startups Based on Locations

Now that you know what type of companies we’re discussing and how fast this sector is growing, it’s time for us to provide you with some good examples. We’ve decided to list the top fintech startups based on where they are, to make it easier for you to navigate in this fast-growing world.

Image of a city and overlay a digital graphic of a globe and different currencies flying around it.

Fintech Startups in the US

We’ll begin our list by mentioning the new businesses in the States since this is a brewing location for any kind of innovation.

Fintech Startups New York

If you’re familiar with technologies, you’re not surprised why we’re starting with this exact location. The fintech startups in New York are developing with the speed of lightning, as this is one of the biggest tech hubs in the world and also one of the most influential cities when it comes to finances.

Chainalysis: This fintech startup New York-based was founded in 2014 and is already one of the top blockchain analysis tools. What the company does is help institutions identify and stop criminals from using cryptocurrencies for money laundering or other crimes. The investigation software is widely used by banks, crypto businesses, and even governments.
Ellevest: Did you know that it was reported in 2021 that only 1.5% of global fintech firms are founded by women? Luckily, the ladies (and gents) behind this fintech startup New York called Ellevest are here to join the fight and bring personalized, gender-aware financial solutions. They offer services for women like portfolio management, debit card to earn rewards, and special memberships.
Unit: This is one of the fintech startups New York located that is likely to change the whole sector. Unit helps tech companies to build financial features into their products, including accounts, cards, payments, lending, and more. The best thing about it? The new business, founded in 2019, promises that it will do that in just a few weeks, not years!
Propel: This New York company comes with the cause to help low-income Americans improve their financial health. How does it do that? By using modern, respectful and effective technology and building software to help those in need, without making them study complicated systems or dive deep into bureaucracy.

Fintech Startups California

California is another spot where financial and technological development is booming. Here are some companies from the area worth noting.

Brex: Located in San Francisco, this fintech startup California emerged in 2017 to provide financial help specifically to tech companies. Brex offers business credit cards and cash management accounts for technological businesses while allowing them to launch, scale, and grow their finances on the platform.
Figure: We’ve got all of you blockchain nerds covered by this fintech startup California based. Using blockchain, Figure delivers a range of financial solutions for homeowners, home equity lines, mortgage refinancing, and investment opportunities, to name a few. What makes the company worth mentioning are the low-interest rates, product customization, and responsive online applications.
Chime: This is one of the relatively established new businesses in the sector, founded almost 10 years ago. They say they want to profit with their members, not from them. The fintech startup California located, works by partnering with regional banks to design member-first financial products, delivering very cheap services, compared to traditional finances. Members who use Chime can access bank accounts with fee-free overdrafts, receive early access to their paychecks, improve their credit, and more perks.

Fintech Startups Boston

Another US location that has quite a few new developing companies in the sector is Boston. Let’s look at the developing companies from there.

Circle: Are you familiar with USD Coin (USDC)? This is one of the most popular stablecoins on the crypto market. But do you know that behind it stands a fintech startup Boston located? Circle, along with Coinbase, is one of the co-founders of the popular digital assets but it’s also a company that helps businesses accept payments and send payouts globally in one unified platform.
Plastiq: This fintech startup Boston based was built to give the choice of how to pay and get paid to businesses everywhere. They claim to be the easier, faster, and smarter way to improve cash flow and they achieve that by creating better payable and cash flow management systems and upgrading receivables and payment collection.
Alpha Vantage: This developing business in the area provides high-quality financial market data through a set of powerful and developer-friendly APIs. It gives you data for stocks, ETFs, Forex, cryptocurrencies, and other asset classes, all created in JSON, Excel, and Google Sheets.

Fintech Startups Chicago

Another place where you’ll notice a good amount of growing companies in the sector is Chicago. Let’s look at some of them.

Airfordable: This is a fintech startup Chicago located that provides payment plans for flights before your departure. The app allows you to book your flight for a fraction of its price and pay later for it, as well as lets you pick the payment option that is most suitable for you while providing you with a payment and trip tracking solution in one place.
Zero Hash: This is a fintech startup Chicago based that lets you seamlessly integrate crypto products into your platform. The business offers tools and APIs to assist in managing post-trade, liquidity, regulatory compliance, and custody solutions for users. It also provides risk and settlement solutions, as well as asset management services.
Amount: This company claims to be born out of the disruption and built for speed. What they do is, they partner with banks and financial institutions to digitize their financial infrastructure and optimize growth opportunities.

Image of a text saying Fintech and a graphic of different items related to it, as well as a human hand pointing with a pen towards them.

Fintech Startups in Other Locations

We’ve shown just the tip of the iceberg with the mentioned US companies here because the States is one of the places where financial technology is really developing and thriving. However, it’s only fair to list some other companies from different locations, to show you that while the US may be at the center of attention, others deserve it too.

UK: Some fintech startups London based include Monzo, a digital-only bank platform and market place, allowing customers to use different products and services, GoCardless, a company that makes collecting payments by direct debit easier, OpenGamma, an analytics company for reducing the costs of trading derivatives, and Rebank, providing banking services for high-growth start-ups.
Germany: Companies like Mambu, a SaaS banking engine provider for lending and deposit services, Matter Labs, helping with the mass adoption of public blockchains, and Trade Republic, Europe’s first commission-free mobile brokerage, are fintech startups Berlin based that we can’t miss to mention.
France: Fintech startups Paris located that are worth mentioning include Lydia, an app to manage your money easily without having to leave your bank, PayFit, which allows small and medium businesses to pay their employees easy and fast, and Multis, a software for Web 3.0 companies to manage their finances.

How to Invest in Fintech Startups?

Has seeing all those interesting evolving businesses in financial technology made you curious if you can be a part of them? That could happen by purchasing some fintech stocks, though you have to know that not all companies provide their stocks for public purchase just yet, as they’re new on the market and it may take some time. But if you got lucky, and the new company you like is publicly traded, you can buy their shares on different brokerages online, like eToro, for example, in just a few steps.

You may also be wondering about something else related to finances – who funds fintech startups? If you aren’t, you will wonder this after you learn that such companies had raised over $121.7 billion by February 2021. The answer is institutional investors, different investors funds, fundraising events, or the creators of the companies themselves. If your friend is starting a business in this sector and you see the potential, you too could become one of the people funding the next big thing in the field.

Is This the Future of the Financial Technology Sector?

So many companies in the field emerge yearly that not all could compete for the leading spot, being their fault or just the strong competition. But we can be hopeful that newly found companies could bring a lot to the expanding sector we’ve discussed here, as they benefit from the developing technologies and the knowledge of their ambitious teams. Here we gave you examples of some companies that started fairly recently but are already making names in the fintech area. We can only wait and see which ones will become the big players and which new ones will compete rightly with them.

About the Author

Ralitsa Bozhilova

Editor with a passion for everything digital, who got lucky to geek out about it as a full-time job.

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