Happy 4th July
Well okay by the time this gets published it will be the 5th… But that’s no reason to stop celebrating… and it’s a Friday.
Here at FinTech Connect, we love the annual celebration by our close friends, over on the other side of the Atlantic. They all get the day off to celebrate getting rid of us (the rule of Britain, not us personally, maybe our ancestors). If you want to find out how it came about I recommend going to see the musical Hamilton; a history lesson mixed with great contemporary hip hop.
America also happens to be home to a huge amount of FinTech Innovation. San Francisco and New York both offer huge opportunity; one being the tech centre of the Western World, the other still being the global financial capital.
Let us look at some of the big fintechs that are not only big in America, but have the potential to have a impact over here.
These are the 8 most profitable private, venture backed fintechs in the US as of June 2019*.
Why 8 do you ask? Well, 5 seemed too short, and I didn’t think I’d keep you attention for 10… 8 seemed like a nice round number.
Expect to hear some of these, if not all of them, speaking at our flagship show in December!
1. Stripe $22.5 billion
Stripe has been an Irish American success story; two brothers from Limerick Ireland, who have change the payments world. They got their first with a strong UX which made online business payments safer and easier. Patrick and John Collison launched their game changing platform in 2011, focussing originally on SMEs. Today they count giants Microsoft and Amazon as partners. Watch this space for more developments
2. Coinbase $8billion
A company who will be currently looking over their shoulders at what Facebook want to do in the blockchain space. Coinbase is the globe’s largest digital currency exchange. They have been central to the success of bitcoin…. And with bitcoin currently witnessing a bull market run to $12000 off the back off the buzz around Libra; they look to go from strength to strength.
3. Robinhood $5.6 billion
Wonderful anglophile name (although interestingly a role that has been most famously been played by an American who didn’t even attempt the accent – here’s looking at you Costner). Anyway, I digress. The company brings the stock-market to the masses (ah this is where the name comes in), by allowing the general public to invest in US stock exchanges via a smartphone app. On top of this, they don’t charge any commission fees.
4. Ripple Labs $5 billion
Another blockchain badass, that is taking full advantage of the crypto renaissance. Ripple developed the Ripple Payment Protocol and Exchange Network which utilizes blockchain technology to act as an interbank messaging platform. Exciting, profitable stuff, that could, in time, prove to be a paradigm shift in cross border payments.
5. SoFi $4.4 billion
This is oh so millennial. And if its one thing Californian tech start ups love; its millennials. SoFi, short for Social Finance inc, specialises in providing student loan funds for affluent white collar millennials. This has now branched out as said millennials take their next steps into mortgages, robo-investing advice and life insurance.
6. Credit Karma $4 billion
I met the Credit Karma guys 3 years ago at a conference I organised in San Francisco, and they were lovely and excited about being on the way up. So it is great to see them continue to innovate. They offer a set of free services to a client base of over 85 million. Giving them a chance to get their credit score, among other financial services, for free. The monetization model is from the referral fees when users bite on the personalized offers for credit cards and loans it shows them.
7. Circle $3 billion
Circle offers individuals, institutions and entrepreneurs a platform to trade, invest and raise capital using open crypto technologies. The crypto-finance giants are having a rather good time of it currently. Last October they partnered with Coinbase to launch USDC stable coin, a crypto asset using the Ethereum blockchain and backed by U.S. dollars. More recently their charismatic CEO, Jeremy Allaire, has been banging the drum on how the Libra announcement will change finance, and the regulatory challenges this presents.
8. Plaid $2.65 billion
Plaid’s mission statement is all about Fintech for good. Their Modus Operandi according to their website is ‘focused on democratizing financial services through technology’, they have done this through integration with over 10000 banks and their own UX friendly payments platform.
So there you go. There’s my top 8; lets see how they continue to change the finance world!
*Source Bloomberg
**Disclosure: The author unfortunately owns no cryptocurrency at the time of writing.
Register for FinTech Connect on 3–4 December at ExCeL, London.
View the FinTech Connect 2019 website to find out more
