25 fintech companies set for stardom

PAYMENTS

GoCardless
London
gocardless.com

What it does: Process­es direct deb­it pay­ments in a clean­er, sim­pler, quick­er way.
Why it’s hot: Hav­ing become the UK’s lead­ing direct deb­it provider, the com­pa­ny is launch­ing new prod­ucts, and focus­ing its atten­tions on larg­er busi­ness­es and for­eign mar­kets, start­ing with Europe.

Transferwise
London
transferwise.com

What it does: Trans­par­ent, low-cost mon­ey trans­fers across cur­ren­cy board­ers.
Why it’s hot: Has trans­ferred £1 bil­lion of its cus­tomers’ mon­ey. Investors already include Peter Thiel, Richard Bran­son, Index Ven­tures and Seed­camp. Recent spec­u­la­tion sug­gest­ed that pos­si­ble invest­ment from Sequoia Cap­i­tal could val­ue the com­pa­ny at close to $1 bil­lion.

Stripe
San Francisco
stripe.com/gb

What it does: Online pay­ment tech­nol­o­gy that allows com­pa­nies to accept pay­ments through their app or web­site.
Why it’s hot: Work­ing on e‑commerce with Apple, Face­book and Twit­ter. Closed a $70-mil­lion fund­ing round late last year which val­ued the com­pa­ny at $3.5 bil­lion, more than dou­ble what it was worth less than a year ago.

Venmo
New York and San Francisco
venmo.com

What it does: App links to users’ bank accounts and allows them to send mon­ey to con­tacts instant­ly, and for free.
Why it’s hot: Although pay­ments are cur­rent­ly free and only between con­sumers, the app could be used to trans­act pay­ments to mer­chants who would pay a fee for the ser­vice.

Adyen
Amsterdam
www.adyen.com

What it does: Pay­ments plat­form that claims to enable busi­ness­es to accept almost any type of pay­ment, any­where in the world.
Why it’s hot: Closed a $250-mil­lion fund­ing round at the end of last year that val­ued the com­pa­ny at $1.5 bil­lion.

Tipalti
Israel and Palo Alto
www.tipalti.com

What it does: Stream­lines and auto­mates the way com­pa­nies make pay­ments to large num­bers of pay­ees.
Why it’s hot: Designed to take care of reg­u­la­to­ry and tax require­ments, even when pay­ees are in mul­ti­ple coun­tries. Cur­rent­ly serves more than 250,000 pay­ees glob­al­ly and process­es over $1 bil­lion annu­al­ly.

Ant Financial
Hangzhou and Shanghai
global.alipay.com

What it does: A range of tech­nol­o­gy-based finan­cial ser­vices. For­mer­ly known as Ali­pay, an affil­i­ate of the now-pub­lic Chi­nese e‑commerce giant, Aliba­ba.
Why it’s hot: Cur­rent­ly has a user-base of 300 mil­lion, con­trols half the Chi­nese e‑commerce mar­ket and processed $519 bil­lion in pay­ments dur­ing 2013. Has 100 mil­lion users of its mobile wal­let and is report­ed­ly eye­ing inter­na­tion­al expan­sion.

Astropay
London
astropaycard.com

What it does: Pre-paid vir­tu­al card tech­nol­o­gy and cross-bor­der pay­ment ser­vices.
Why it’s hot: Already the largest com­pa­ny of its type across Latin Amer­i­ca, it has now com­plet­ed a suc­cess­ful test in Chi­na and is tar­get­ing expan­sion there. It will offer Chi­nese con­sumers the abil­i­ty to make inter­na­tion­al online pay­ments, some­thing that many cur­rent­ly lack.

COMPANY INFORMATION

Digital Shadows
London
www.digitalshadows.com

What is does: Pro­vides busi­ness with pro­tec­tion and advice regard­ing the dig­i­tal foot­print they leave behind.
Why it’s hot: Mon­i­tors mil­lions of data sources, includ­ing social media in 26 lan­guages, to iden­ti­fy and mit­i­gate secu­ri­ty threats. A grad­u­ate of the fin­tech inno­va­tion lab at Lev­el 39, the com­pa­ny will close a Series‑A fund­ing round and open offices in San Fran­cis­co and New York this year.

DueDil
London
www.duedil.com

What it does: Pub­lish­es and con­tex­tu­alis­es pri­vate com­pa­nies’ infor­ma­tion.
Why it’s hot: Offers users the abil­i­ty to under­stand the finan­cial per­for­mance of their com­peti­tors, sup­pli­ers and cus­tomers, and already offers data about pri­vate com­pa­nies in 20 coun­tries. Has part­nered with Investec to launch an index of the fastest grow­ing mid-size com­pa­nies in the UK.

PEER-TO-PEER

Funding Circle
London
www.fundingcircle.com

What it does: Plat­form for peer-to-peer (P2P) or mar­ket­place lend­ing.
Why it’s hot: Has facil­i­tat­ed more than $500 mil­lion of loans. Com­pa­ny has also struck a deal with a US invest­ment group that will lend £132 mil­lion to small UK busi­ness­es via the plat­form in one of the first inter­na­tion­al deals in alter­na­tive finance.

Market Invoice
London
www.marketinvoice.com

What it does: The plat­form pro­vides com­pa­nies with access to invoice finance ser­vices, with­out forc­ing them to com­mit to long-term con­tracts.
Why it’s hot: With £1.5 mil­lion in seed fund­ing, it has gone on to lend more than £300 mil­lion, act as a con­duit for UK gov­ern­ment fund­ing, do a deal with PwC and part­ner with FTSE 100 soft­ware provider Sage.

LendInvest
London
www.lendinvest.com

What it does: P2P mort­gage lend­ing for buy-to-let investors and prop­er­ty entre­pre­neurs.
Why it’s hot: The first and biggest P2P real estate plat­form in the world. Pro­vides fast loans of up to 75 per cent of the val­ue of a prop­er­ty to bor­row­ers and returns of 5 to 8 per cent for investors. Has lent more than £170 mil­lion to date.

Lending Club
San Francisco
www.lendingclub.com

What it does: Var­i­ous types of peer-to-peer lend­ing.
Why it’s hot: Float­ed on the New York Stock Exchange at the end of last year and cur­rent­ly has a mar­ket val­ue of around $7.5 bil­lion. Recent­ly announced a deal with Google, one of its largest investors, to facil­i­tate small-busi­ness loans to the tech giant’s part­ners.

Lendico
Berlin
www.lendico.com

What it does: P2P lend­ing.
Why it’s hot: Comes from the Rock­et Inter­net sta­ble of com­pa­nies, found­ed by the con­tro­ver­sial Samw­er broth­ers. The busi­ness has had huge suc­cess by repli­cat­ing proven inter­net busi­ness mod­els and rolling them out in new mar­kets.

Kreditech
Hamburg
www.kreditech.com

What it does: A cred­it bureau for the dig­i­tal age, offer­ing high­ly indi­vid­u­alised loans to smart­phone users, based on algo­rithms and big data.
Why it’s hot: As long as some­one uses a smart­phone, the com­pa­ny should be able to estab­lish their cred­it­wor­thi­ness. As a result, emerg­ing mar­kets present a huge, as yet untapped, oppor­tu­ni­ty.

DIGITAL CURRENCY

Bitreserve
San Francisco
bitreserve.org

What it does: Allows bit­coin to be held as real-world cur­ren­cies.
Why it’s hot: Backed by a reserve of real mon­ey, Bitre­serve aims to elim­i­nate the risk and volatil­i­ty of bit­coin, but retain its ben­e­fits. Raised £6.3 mil­lion in fund­ing via Crowd­cube and Ven­o­vate, smash­ing Crowdcube’s pre­vi­ous record of £1.9 mil­lion.

Coinbase
San Francisco
www.coinbase.com

What it does: Makes it easy for peo­ple to buy, sell and use bit­coin.
Why it’s hot: With 2.1 mil­lion con­sumer wal­lets, it is thought to be the most wide­ly used bit­coin wal­let in the world. Also process­es bit­coin pay­ments for 38,000 mer­chants and is ful­ly oper­a­tional in 19 coun­tries.

Epiphyte
San Francisco
www.epiphyte.us

What it does: Pro­vides enter­prise soft­ware that enables banks and oth­er finan­cial insti­tu­tions to take advan­tage of dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy.
Why it’s hot: Could help estab­lished insti­tu­tions to fend off the star­tups that have been threat­en­ing to lure cus­tomers away with sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er fees for cur­ren­cy trans­fers.

INVESTMENTS

Up Investments
London
www.investup.co

What it does: Plat­form to allow investors to man­age and keep track of all their crowd­fund­ing and P2P invest­ments.
Why it’s hot: With alter­na­tive finance in the UK grow­ing by around 150 per cent each year, a free super­mar­ket-cum-dash­board makes per­fect sense.

Nutmeg
London
www.nutmeg.com

What it does: Acces­si­ble wealth man­age­ment for any­one with £1,000 or more to invest.
Why it’s hot: Being a web-based plat­form allows it to charge sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er fees than its tra­di­tion­al com­peti­tors.

Betterment
New York
www.betterment.com

What it does: The “robo advis­er” auto­mates per­son­al invest­ment based on indi­vid­u­als’ spe­cif­ic pref­er­ences and require­ments.
Why it’s hot: Only four years after being found­ed, it already has $1 bil­lion of assets under man­age­ment and charges only 0.15 per cent to 0.35 per cent in fees.

STARTUPS TO WATCH

Starling
London
starlingbank.co.uk

What it does: Branch­less mobile bank­ing for the iPhone gen­er­a­tion.
Why it’s hot: Led by a for­mer Allied Irish chief oper­at­ing offi­cer and backed by WPP, the start­up will set out to be more like Google or Ama­zon than a typ­i­cal bank. Expect­ed to launch late this year.

Lendable
London
www.lendable.co.uk

What it does: P2P lend­ing plat­form that gives bor­row­ers per­son­alised rates.
Why it’s hot: Lend­able uses infor­ma­tion about would-be bor­row­ers to match them with investors. Even peo­ple with less-than-per­fect cred­it rat­ings can bor­row, if they pay a high­er rate.

Tink
Stockholm
www.tinkapp.com/en

What it does: Helps users to mon­i­tor their per­son­al finances via an app.
Why it’s hot: Claims to have 200,000 users in Swe­den – 2 per cent of the country’s total pop­u­la­tion – and has sights set on Euro­pean expan­sion fol­low­ing $4‑million Series‑A fund­ing round and “best in show award” at indus­try expo Fino­vate.