The fintech revolution: who is transforming the financial landscape?
According to the latest data from CBinsight, a research Institute, as of December 27, 2021, there were 943 unicorns in the world, with a total valuation of about $3 trillion.
Among them, the number of unicorns in fintech is the largest, accounting for 20.4%.
Since 2017, the number of fintech unicorns worldwide has increased nearly eight times. There are now nearly 200 fintech unicorns in the world, with a total valuation of nearly $500 billion.
Fintech unicorns mainly include four fields: payment, operations and infrastructure, digital banking, and retail lending.This is consistent with the distribution of investment in each track. The number of unicorns in these fields accounts for about 25%, 15%, 13% and 10% respectively.
World-famous fintech unicorns
Pre-IPO Buzz has introduced seven fintech companies, which have attracted much attention in their respective categories.
Founded in Ireland in 2010, then moved its headquarters to the United States. With a valuation of $95 billion it is the second-largest fintech unicorn in the world, after Ant Group, and mainly provides online payment-related functions.
Stripe has been repeatedly tested in the IPO decision, making it extremely difficult for foreign media to track information. According to Forbes, Stripe could easily be one of the biggest IPOs to go public if the founders decide to take the risk.
Founded in 2005 in Sweden and valued at $45.6 billion, Klarna is Europe's largest fintech unicorn. It is the world's largest BNPL service provider, offering services similar to Huabei.
There are many rumors about Klarna's listing, including IPO, DPO and SPAC. Judging from the buzz, either way, Klarna should be close to going public.
Checkout.com was founded in Singapore in 2009 then moved its headquarters to the United Kingdom. Valued at $40 billion, it is the largest fintech unicorn in the UK, mainly acting as a payment processor, providing API interfaces for customers to access bank accounts.
Checkout.com has not raised funds until 2019 for ten consecutive years since its establishment in 2009. “We’ll have a long life in the public market,” its CEO said. “We have a couple of years before we get there.”
Revolut, founded in the UK in 2015 and valued at $33 billion, is the second-largest fintech unicorn in the UK, mainly providing digital bank accounts and other financial services, including cryptocurrency transactions.
Revolut won't plan to go public immediately after completing huge financing in August last year, but its CEO said the company would increase its revenue by "billions of dollars" or consider an IPO.
The company's 2020 revenue has already reached £222 million ($301 million)
Founded in the United States in 2013 and valued at $25 billion, Chime is the largest digital bank in the United States, providing nearly zero-fee digital banking services to customers through partnerships with Bancorp Bank and Stride Bank.
Chime is currently in talks to go public at a valuation of $3.5 billion to $45 billion and plans to launch an IPO in March, according to people familiar with the matter.
Plaid, founded in the United States in 2013 and valued at $13.4 billion, is the largest unicorn in the Bay Area, mainly developing financial services APIs to connect customers to bank accounts.
Visa announced it was intending to acquire Plaid for $5.3 billion but later abandoned the deal after opposition by the United States Department of Justice due to data privacy, antitrust risks and monopolist reasons.
Plaid declined to comment on the status of the listing, but based on various recent rumors, it should not be far off.
Brex was founded in the United States in 2017. Valued at $12.3 billion, is one of the world's young unicorns, mainly providing credit card services, focusing on providing solutions for start-up financing.
"Brex doesn't plan to go public "anytime soon," co-CEO Henrique Dubugras said Wednesday during an event on March 2, 2022.
"I think we would only consider going public in a good market. We're not anti-going public or anything, but we're still a five year-old company and I think it's very normal for companies to wait until they're eight or nine years old. "He said.
Fintech startups' valuation comparison
Fintech unicorns have seen their valuations soar, with Stripe leading the pack with a $95 billion valuation. Here's a picture to help you compare.
Mooers, which of these companies do you think are undervalued and which are overvalued? Welcome to express your views.
Mobile payment becomes popular
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, mobile payment has grown rapidly.
According to the FinTech Report 2021 – Digital Payments released by Statista, the size of the global digital payment market will be $5474.6 billion in 2020, and will reach $10520.3 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 14%.
The reduction of cash payment will continue to be a common trend,digital payment will become the default payment method for more and more consumers.
In the next few years, mobile payment will embrace an even brighter future.
Fintech's general trend
Some researchers point out that almost all companies will have a part of their revenue from financial service soon .
Every company, even those not involved in financial services, will have the opportunity to benefit from fintech for the first time.
A survey by the World Economic Forum found that only 28% of millennials believe their banks are fair and honest.
Under the trend that people do not trust traditional banks in the future, providing new financial solutions can often bring new opportunities to enterprises.
Take the mobile phone industry as an example, Apple officially launched the Apple Credit Card in 2019.
If fans like its credit card as much as they like the iPhone, the Apple credit card can attract a large amount of consumption.
Similarly, in the ride-hailing industry, every ride-hailing company has to spend a lot of money to get drivers. If they were also profitable in financial services, they would cover their costs much faster.
As a driver, the online car-hailing app may also be your bank. Surveys have shown that drivers prefer to stay with a ride-hailing company that also provides financial services.
In the B2B field, Shopify, for example, provides website services for any merchant and charges a monthly subscription fee.
There is also a company called Mindbody, which helps fitness studios like yoga studios manage their businesses, also for a monthly fee. Nearly 50% of both companies' revenue comes from providing financial services.
It was pointed out that in the future, every company should probably consider how to use financial services to better serve customers, better retain customers and make more profits. This is also a major trend in the field of the modern Internet.
Fintech's brutal competition
The emergence of fintech unicorns will always be accompanied by the collapse of many fintech companies. If an industry has unlimited prospects, its competition will become crueler and crueler.
British media altfireported that Five fintech closed down their UK operations this year. They are Scalable Capital, Scalable Capital, Yolt (Consumer app), PagoFX, and Wealth simple.
Things weren’t quite as bad as 2020, when they counted six fintech startups that went out of business, but still worse than 2019 when just three fintech startups shut down.
Fintech is the mainstream in the future, but its risks also need to be paid attention to. Mooers, have you invested in fintech companies? Are you optimistic about the trend of fintech?
Disclaimer: Community is offered by Moomoo Technologies Inc. and is for educational purposes only.
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