Business Insider Singapore, CBInsights, Funderbeam, and Crunchbase together have created the world’s fintech unicorns – fintech start-ups valued at over $1 billion.
Fintech Unicorns Worth $1 billion
27. Rong360, Chinese Financial Comparison Site
Value: $1 billion | Raised: $258 million
Rong360 is riding the online finance wave in China, letting consumers compare and contrast all the various products that are being offered. Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital, an early investor in Google, Apple, and WhatsApp, is a backer.
26. China Rapid Finance, Chinese Peer-to-peer Lender
Value: $1 billion | Raised: $56 million
Founded: 2001 (although online lending did not start until 2011) | | HQ: Shanghai
China Rapid Finance is one of the country’s largest online consumer loans marketplace and has made 4.7 million loans over its platform worth over $4.7 billion. The company is said to be planning a US IPO.
25. Zuora, Software That Lets Companies Take Subscriptions
Value: $1 billion | Raised: $242.5 million
Founded: 2007 | | HQ: San Francisco
Zuora is the world’s largest provider of Relationship Business Management (RBM) services. At the heart of RBM is the idea that customers are happier subscribing to a service on a recurring basis than they are purchasing a product once.
24. Coupa Software, A Cloud-based Spending Management Tool
Value: $1 billion | Raised: $169 million
Founded: 2006 | | HQ: California
Coupa pitches itself as “savings as a service” — plug in its software and it will help identify savings in your business and help you manage costs. Salesforce manages 80% of its costs with Coupa.
23. Jimubox, A Chinese Peer-to-peer Loan Provider
Value: $1 billion | Raised: $131.2 million
The company is part of a wave of so-called “internet finance” companies that have sprung up across China in the last few years and is experiencing explosive growth.
22. Kabbage, Online Small Business Lender
Value: $1 billion | Raised: $238.6 million
Kabbage plugs into social media data and builds that into its credit scoring model and has a fully automated loan application process that can give a business a loan in as little as 7 minutes. Santander recently partnered with the platform.
21. Gusto, Online Payroll Tools For Small Businesses
Value: $1 billion | Raised: $161.1 million
Founded: 2011 | | HQ: San Francisco
Gusto, formerly known as ZenPayroll, offers cloud-based software that automates payroll and tax calculations for small businesses. 25,000 companies use it and it is backed by Google Capital.
20. Funding Circle, A Peer-to-peer Loan Platform For Small Businesses
Value: $1 billion | Raised: $273.2 million
Funding Circle is a business financing company that helps small businesses develop to make our economy stronger. It has funded $1.8 billion worth of loans since launch and is currently growing its business in America.
Fintech Unicorns Worth Above $1 billion and Less Than $2 billion
19. TransferWise, An International Money Transfer Service
Value: $1.1 billion | Raised: $116.3 million
TransferWise is the clever new alternative to banks and brokers, that allows people to transfer money abroad at a lower cost. It uses technology developed by the people who built Skype and PayPal to remove all the fees the foreign exchange industry has kept hidden for decades. The company has transferred $4.7 billion since launch and is now doing $783 million a month.
18. FinancialForce.com, Sells Cloud-based Accounting Apps
Value: $1.5 billion | Raised: $193.9 million
Founded: 2009 | | HQ: San Francisco
FinancialForce is backed by Salesforce Ventures, Technology Crossover Ventures, Advent International and UNIT4. Tonnes of big enterprise companies use it, including Hewlett Packard and Lexmark. It was spun out of Salesforce.
17. Prosper, A Peer-to-peer Lending Platform For Consumers
Value: $1.9 billion | Raised: $354.9 million
Founded: 2005 | | HQ: San Francisco
Over $6 billion has been lent over the platform. Backers include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, famed Silicon Valley VC fund Sequoia Capital, and Credit Suisse.
Fintech Unicorns Worth $2 billion
16. Avant Credit, Online Lender
Value: $2 billion | Raised: $654 million
The company has lent over £2 billion to more than 450,000 people since launch. However, it has recently run into some trouble amid a wider slowdown in the online lending industry and has been cutting back jobs and slashing lending targets.
15. One97, Runs India’s Biggest Mobile Marketplace and Wallet
Value: $2 billion | Raised: $585 million
Founded: 2000 | | HQ: New Delhi
Paytm has 50 million registered wallets and handles 800,000 orders a day. Uber is a partner.
14. Zenefits, Free HR Software for Small Businesses
Value: $2 billion | Raised: $583.6 million
Founded: 2013 | | HQ: San Francisco
Revenue grew from $1 million (£640,000) to $20 million (£12.7 million) between 2013 and 2014, leading TechCrunch to call Zenefits one of the fastest growing software companies of all-time. However, the startup has witnessed a spectacular collapse this year, with its value more than halving from $4.5 billion after it emerged it was selling insurance without a licence in multiple states.
13. ZhongAn Insurance, China’s First Online-only Insurer
Value: $2 billion | Raised: $931.3 million
Founded: 2013 | HQ: Shanghai
The company was set up by the hottest names in Chinese tech: Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Tencent chairman Ma Huateng, and PingAn chairman Ma Mingzhe. The company is planning a $2 billion IPO in China this year, according to Reuters.
12. GreenSky, Lets Businesses Offer Credit to Customers
Value: $2 billion | Raised:At least $150 million
GreenSky works with partners including huge US DIY chain Home Depot and the likes of Room to Go and Mac Tools.
Fintech Unicorns Worth Above $2 billion and Less Than
$5 billion
11. Klarna, Online Payment Processing
Value: $2.25 billion | Raised: $291.3 million
Founded: 2005 | | HQ: Stockholm
Last year it processed $9 billion worth of transactions and it deals with 30% of all online payments in its native Sweden. Sequoia Capital, the Silicon Valley fund that backed PayPal, is an investor.
10. Adyen, An Online Payment Processor
Value: $2.3 billion | Raised: $2.3 billion
Founded: 2006 | | HQ: Amsterdam
Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, SoundCloud, and Netflix are all customers. Iconiq Capital, “a “billionaires fund” backed by the likes of Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, has invested.
9. Mozido, A Mobile Payment and Aallet Provider
Value: $2.4 billion | Raised: $307.2 million
Founded: 2005 | | HQ: New York
The company is targeting emerging markets like Mexico, Southeast Asia, and Africa where a generation of consumers are skipping banking and moving straight to mobile money. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is an investor through his early-stage fund TomorrowVentures.
8. Oscar Health, Online Health Insurance
Value: $2.7 billion | Raised: $727.5 million
Founded: 2013 | | HQ: New York
The company took just 16 months to break the $1 billion valuation mark and backers include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Goldman Sachs, and Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest man.
7. Credit Karma, Free Credit Scores
Value: $3.5 billion | Raised: $368 million
Founded: 2007 | | HQ: San Francisco
The company has 35 million users and Google Capital is an investor.
6. SoFi, A Marketplace For Student Loan Refinancing
Value: $4 billion | Raised: $1.3 billion
Founded: 2011 | | HQ: San Francisco
It has financed $10 billion (£7.6 billion) of loans to date and has almost 150,000 members. However, like most in the industry SoFi has been suffering from a slowdown in growth in the online lending sector.
5. Stripe, Online Payment Processing
Value: $5 billion | Raised: $260 million
Founded: 2010 | | HQ: San Francisco
Fitbit, Pinterest, Twitter, Salesforce.com, Lyft, The Guardian, Kickstarter, and Reddit are some of the notable companies that use it.
Fintech Unicorns Worth Above $5 billion
4. Qufenqi, Lets Chinese Consumers Buy Electronics In Installments
Value: $5.9 billion| Raised: $874 million
Founded: 2014 | HQ: Beijing
It’s raised a huge amount of money in a short time and is targeting China’s fast-growing aspirational classes. Like a lot of Chinese companies, it hasn’t disclosed much more than funding but investors clearly see big growth potential.
3. JD Finance, Online Financial services Tied to Online Shopping
Value: $7 billion | Raised: $1 billion
Founded: 1998 | | HQ: Chaoyang, China
JD Finance is a spin-off from Chinese online shopping giant JD.com. It provides credit for consumers shopping on JD.com, as well as other financial services.
2. Lufax, Chinese Peer-to-peer Lender
Value: $18.5 billion | Raised: $368 million
Founded: 2011 | | HQ: Shanghai
Lufax has financed 20,000 loans worth a collective $2.5 billion (£1.6 billion) since launch. It is controlled by Ping An Insurance, the country’s largest insurer by value.
1. Ant Financial, Runs China’s Biggest Mobile Payment Product Alipay
Value: $60 billion | Raised: $4.5 billion
Founded: 2004 | | HQ: Hangzhou
Ant Financial’s Alipay is an absolute Goliath in China, where mobile payments are much more common. The company is a spin-off from Alibaba, the e-commerce giant, and does vouchers and credit as well as payments.