Venture capital funding is down dramatically, but innovation is still thriving, with 19 of the companies on our eighth annual honor roll new to the list.
Reported by Steven Ehrlich, Jeff Kauflin, Emily Mason, Jonathan Ponciano and Hank Tucker
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s publicly traded fintech stocks remain in a slump, down 60% on average from their late 2021 peak, private fintech startups are similarly slogging through challenging times. Venture capitalists have pulled back, investing $75 billion globally into fintechs in 2022, down from $140 billion in 2021, reports CB Insights. That makes the business climate even tougher for the newest startups since they rely heavily on outside funding, as opposed to ongoing revenue.
That’s reflected in the number of new companies that made 2023’s Fintech 50, our eighth annual list of the most innovative startups. Nineteen companies this year were first-timers, down from an all-time high of 25 last year.
It’s likely no accident that many of the newcomers provide back-end support or services to other businesses–in other words, they don’t require a massive investment of VC dollars to make a splash with consumers. One new listmaker, VizyPay, is even a completely boot-strapped operation. Based in Waukee, Iowa, it helps small businesses in rural areas process payments in a manner that offsets credit and debit card fees (those paying cash automatically get a discount).
In fact, the payments sector accounted for six of the 19 newcomers this year, as entrepreneurs zeroed in on new niches where they could add value and compete. For example, Mountain View-based TabaPay speeds up money movement for fintechs and banks. It has direct access to 14 payment networks including Visa, Mastercard, and regional debit networks, which allows it to smartly route payments for faster speeds and lower fees. Nium helps payroll and human resources platforms like Rippling and Deel disburse payments in 200 countries. GlossGenius makes appointment-booking and payments software for independent beauty businesses.
Business to business banking startups also fared well. Fintech 50 newcomer Lead Bank, for instance, issues loans and processes payments for fintech and crypto startups, including credit card company Ramp, as well as multinational consumer companies. Former Square Capital head Jackie Reses launched it last year when she bought a Kansas City bank. Unit is a banking-as-a-service startup that helps other companies offer checking accounts and payments services to their customers; it processed more than $4 billion in transactions last year.
Talk about identifying a niche: Candidly makes software that helps employers and financial service companies offer student loan advice and repayment help as a worker benefit–a hot area that’s getting hotter, thanks to new tax breaks and the looming resumption of federal student loan payments paused during the pandemic. Already, Candidly has partnerships with Vanguard, Empower and PNC Bank and counts Salesforce as an end user.
Fraud prevention is also a growth area–after all, fraudsters themselves aren’t deterred by a slowdown in VC funding. List first-timer SentiLink got its start six years ago detecting synthetic identity fraud, where criminals combine stolen Social Security numbers, fake names and real addresses to create bogus identities. Alloy connects banks and fintechs to fraud-fighting tools from 150 data sources that verify customers’ identities, monitor transactions for suspicious activity and make credit and compliance decisions.
In the insurance segment, At-Bay made its Fintech 50 debut this year–it offers cybersecurity insurance and consulting services to mitigate security threats for small and medium-sized businesses. Kin Insurance is an upstart, digital-only home insurer available in just six states that has forgone agents to keep costs and prices lower.
Below are the 19 newcomers that made our list this year:
Alloy
Connects banks and fintechs to fraud prevention tools from 150 data sources that verify customers’ identities during onboarding, monitor transactions to flag suspicious activity and make credit and compliance decisions. Its 400 customers include Carta, Brex, Stash and numerous regional banks and credit unions. Announced a global expansion to 40 countries in August 2022 and raised a Series C extension in September that upped its valuation to $1.55 billion.
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $210 million from Canapi Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and others.
Latest valuation: $1.55 billion.
Bona fides: Customer count grew by 52% in 2022, now performing an average of 900,000 daily transaction checks.
Cofounders: CEO Tommy Nicholas, 34; President Laura Spiekerman, 36, CTO Charles Hearn, 31; The trio worked together at Virginia-based mobile payment processing startup Knox Payments before starting Alloy in 2015.
At-Bay
Provides cybersecurity insurance and consulting services to help small and medium-sized businesses mitigate security threats, ranging from data privacy breaches to financial fraud.
Customers run the gamut from professional and financial services firms to manufacturing companies and healthcare businesses. At-Bay reached $380 million in annual gross written premiums in 2022.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California.
Funding: $292 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Hapri and others.
Latest valuation: $1.35 billion.
Bona fides: $79 million in revenue and 33,000 customers in 2022, up from $40 million and 13,000 the year prior.
Cofounders: CEO Rotem Iram, 43, a former captain in the Israeli Military Intelligence; chief risk officer Roman Itskovich, 40; Etai Hochman, 36; Tilli Kalisky, 45.
Atomic
Banks, fintechs, credit unions and other consumer-facing finance platforms use its white-label brokerage offering to give their customers access to money market funds, wealth management and treasury management services. Also gives investment advice through its SEC-registered adviser named Helium. Since launching in November 2021, total assets have climbed to over $1 billion.
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $25 million from QED Investors, Anthemis Group, Softbank and others.
Bona fides: 45 corporate customers, quadrupling this year alone.
Cofounders: CEO David Dindi, 30; CTO Marco Alban, 29; and Engineer Emma Marriott, 29; trio who met as undergraduates at Stanford.
Candidly
Its back-end software helps employers and financial service companies offer employer contributions to student loan payments and advice on managing student debt as worker benefits. Has established partnerships with Vanguard, Empower and PNC Bank and counts Salesforce as an end user. Each month, it sees several million dollars in employer contributions flow through its software. Candidly also offers a lending marketplace where employees can shop for student loans.
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $57 million from Altos Ventures, Cercano and Salesforce Ventures.
Latest valuation: $100 – $150 million.
Bona fides: 498 employer customers at the end of 2022, up from 167 the year prior.
Cofounders: CEO Laurel Taylor, 46, who worked in technology sales and at Google before starting Candidly in 2016; president Kevin Walker, 53.
GlossGenius
Appointment-booking and payments software company serving independent beauty businesses. Seven-year-old GlossGenius charges a monthly fee between $24 and $48, collects a 2.6% processing fee on payments and sells custom card readers. In the past year, it launched a feature requiring a deposit at the time of appointment booking to discourage cancellations. More than half of its revenue comes from payments.
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $44 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, Imaginary Ventures, Left Lane Capital and others.
Latest Valuation: $360 million.
Bona fides: Processes more than $2 billion annually for more than 50,000 customers.
Founder and CEO: Danielle Cohen-Shohet, 33, a former alternative investments analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Kin Insurance
Sells home insurance policies digitally in six states (Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina and Arizona), forgoing insurance agents in a bid to keep costs and rates lower. The insurance company itself is structured as a co-op owned by policyholders, with Kin taking 32% of premiums as a management fee. Reinsurance covers about 50% of the risk. Had 105,000 policyholders at the end of 2022, up from 62,000 a year prior. Plans to expand to Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, North Carolina and Georgia over the next year.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois.
Funding: $242 million from QED Investors, Commerce Ventures, Flourish Ventures and others.
Latest valuation: $875 million.
Bona fides: Grew revenue to $68 million in 2022, up from $30 million in 2021.
Cofounders: CEO Sean Harper, 42, who previously cofounded ecommerce startup FeeFighters, which was acquired by Groupon in 2012; CTO Lucas Ward, 40, a former cofounder and CTO of fraud analytics startup Rippleshot.
Lead Bank
A 95-year-old FDIC-insured bank acquired by a cadre of ex-Square execs in August, it now moves money, issues loans and processes payments for fintech and crypto startups, as well as for multinational consumer companies. Clients pay variable fees based on transaction or loan volume, and like any other bank, Lead also gets interest revenue from cash deposits, which totaled $675 million at the end of last year.
Headquarters: Kansas City, Missouri.
Funding: $100 million from Ribbit Capital, Coatue Management, Andreesen Horowitz and others.
Latest valuation: $450 million.
Bona fides: More than 2,600 customers, including Ramp and Self.
Cofounders: CEO Jacqueline Reses, 53; CTO Ronak Vyas, 52; Data Scientist Homam Maalouf, 40; and Chief Legal Officer Erica Khalili, 38—team of execs who built a bank at fintech Block (formerly Square).
Mudflap
Through its marketplace, Mudflap connects owner-operators and small fleets with truck stops offering fuel discounts. In the last year, it also launched the Mudflap Fleet Card, offering added discounts and enabling it to collect fees on customers’ purchases. Mudflap is also rolling out fleet management tools to help business owners manage their fuel costs.
Headquarters: Palo Alto, California.
Funding: $85 million from QED, Matrix Partners, Commerce Ventures and others.
Latest Valuation: $700 million.
Bona fides: 500,000 truckers across 167,000 companies use Mudflap to fuel up.
Cofounders: CEO Sanjay Desai, 49, and head of product Sharon Yapp, 45, both former employees at trucker-navigation and load-management app TruckerPath.
MX
Allows clients to connect to customers’ financial data, interpret that data and build products around those insights. Its customers span traditional financial institutions and fintechs like U.S. Bank, Canadian bank CIBC and Stripe. In August 2022, Jim Magats took the helm of MX as CEO after 18 years as an executive at PayPal.
Headquarters: Lehi, Utah.
Funding: $475 million from Canapi Ventures, CapitalG and TPG Growth, among others.
Latest Valuation: $1.9 billion.
Bona fides: Brought in $99 million in 2022, up from $92 million the year before.
Cofounders: Executive chairman Ryan Caldwell, 47, and Brandon Dewitt, who died in November 2021 at 38 years old.
Nium
A global payment network for businesses offering real-time payments and card-issuing services. The company can disburse payments in nearly 200 countries, collect funds in 100 currencies and issue cards in 35 countries. It counts payroll provider Rippling and human resources platform Deel as customers, and its lead investors include two of the largest sovereign wealth funds in Singapore, Temasek and GIC. In the past two years, Nium has acquired three companies: travel payments business Ixaris, Indian card issuer Wirecard Forex and SoCash, a Singapore-based payment company with a network of over 20,000 retailers across Asia.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California.
Funding: $300 million from Temasek, GIC and Riverwood Capital, among others.
Latest Valuation: $2.1 billion.
Bona fides: In 2022 it brought in more than $80 million in net revenue, up from $31 million in 2021.
Cofounders: CEO Prajit Nanu, 41, former director of business development at global compliance group TMF Group; chief business officer Michael Bermingham, 57, who spent nearly a decade in foreign exchange at trading firm StoneX; chief operating officer Pratik Gandhi, 48, formerly chief business officer at remittance company InstaReM.
SentiLink
Six-year-old startup that uses machine learning models and manual review to try to prevent financial fraud. When one of its financial institution customers receives a new loan application, SentiLink predicts the likelihood that the applicant is a fraudster. It got its start detecting synthetic fraud, where people combine stolen Social Security numbers with fictitious names and real addresses to create phony identities, build credit histories and then take out loans they don’t plan to repay. SentiLink has since expanded into identity fraud and first-party fraud, when consumers dispute charges for legitimate transactions. In 2022, it processed 323 million identity checks for customers, up from 148 million in 2021, and brought in an estimated $25 million in revenue.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California.
Funding: $84 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Felicis Ventures, Craft Ventures and others.
Latest valuation: $430 million, according to PitchBook.
Bona fides: More than 300 customers, including major fintechs like Plaid and Ramp, plus seven of the U.S.’ 15 largest banks–up from 100 customers at the end of 2021.
Cofounders: CEO Naftali Harris and COO Maxwell Blumenfeld, both 31, who met as undergrads at the University of Chicago and worked as data scientists at buy-now, pay-later company Affirm before starting SentiLink.
Stride Funding
Student loan startup offering income-share loans (payments based on borrowers’ post-graduation salary); deferred tuition loans (six large repayments made after graduation); and more traditional private student loans. It markets itself to schools, who then offer Stride as a financing option when students go to pay their tuition. So far, about 200 schools have signed up, ranging from coding bootcamps like General Assembly and Hackbright to traditional institutions like the University of Colorado, Stanford Law School and the New England College of Optometry. Stride charges a management fee to schools and servicing fees to investors who fund its loans.
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts.
Funding: $20 million from Slow Ventures, GSV Ventures, Firework Ventures and others.
Latest valuation: $60 million.
Bona fides: Had 7,600 borrowers at the end of 2022, up from 1,000 the year prior.
Founder: CEO Tess Michaels, 29, a former investment banker whose immigrant father had trouble getting access to student loans.
Super.com
Launched in 2016 as Snapcommerce, a discount hotel reservation service. In October 2022, it changed its name to Super.com and branched into financial services with SuperCash, a secured credit card that offers cash-back rewards and reports payments to credit bureaus. When Super.com’s millions of users book a reservation, they’re prompted to sign up for SuperCash.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California.
Funding: $101 million from Innovia Capital, Lightbank, Telstra Ventures and others.
Latest valuation: Nearly $1 billion.
Bona fides: Super.com has five million active users, and in the seven months after launching SuperCash in October 2022, it issued more than 50,000 cards.
Cofounders: CEO Hussein Fazal, 41, who previously cofounded and sold ad tech company AdParlor; Henry Shi, 30, a former software engineer at Google.
Sure
Provides embedded insurance software, or back-end technology that helps large companies manage their insurance operations. Sure’s tech does everything from generating insurance policy documents to moving money between consumers and insurers so they can pay their premiums. In March 2023, it launched a new feature that aims to make it easier to offer return shipping protection, where, for a small fee, consumers can pay upfront to get free returns.
Headquarters: Santa Monica, California.
Funding: $123 million from Declaration Partners, Kinnevik, W.R. Berkley Corporation and others.
Latest valuation: $550 million.
Bona fides: Has 100 customers, including Farmers Insurance, Toyota and Mastercard.
Cofounders: CEO Wayne Slavin, 39, a serial entrepreneur who cofounded and sold a data backup service and worked on Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-reader; chief strategy officer Jarod Kolman, 46, Slavin’s cousin who is also the founder and chairman of a South African real estate management company.
TabaPay
Six-year-old payments software company that speeds up money movement for fintechs and banks. It has direct access to 14 payment networks including Visa, Mastercard, regional debit networks and the ACH bank-to-bank transfer network, which allows it to smartly route payments for faster speeds and lower fees. TabaPay counts digital bank Chime, bill pay platform Melio and personal loan and credit card company Upgrade as customers.
Headquarters: Mountain View, California.
Funding: Mostly self-funded, it has raised $2.5 million from Aligned Partners.
Bona fides: 2,500 customers at the end of 2022, up from 2,000 the year prior; $26 million in net revenue in 2022, compared with $17 million 2021.
Cofounders: CEO Rodney Robinson, 59, who sold his second payments startup, Omney, to Mastercard in 2014; chief technology officer Marvin Mah, 60, who worked with Robinson at Omney; and chief revenue officer Manoj Verma, 56, a former business development executive.
TaxBit
The crypto audit partner for the Internal Revenue Service, TaxBit is essential to the collection agency’s efforts to catch tax evaders and ensure compliance with the industry’s evolving guidance. On the corporate side, the firm has 45 clients, including PayPal and Kraken, and has filed over 50 million1099 forms on behalf of these enterprises to their customers. It also partnered with TurboTax to help users easily add crypto gains and losses to their tax returns. In January 2023, the company acquired crypto accounting platform Tactic, which it will use to help paying customers such as Google, Ralph Lauren and Fox News keep track of digital assets on their balance sheets.
Headquarters: Draper, UT.
Funding: $235 million from Insight Partners, IVP, Haun Ventures and others.
Latest valuation: $1.3 billion.
Bona fides: Crypto partner for the IRS.
Cofounders: CEO Austin Woodward, 33; his brother Justin Woodward, 31, a tax attorney.
Unit
Tech companies—including AngelList and financial software company Bill.com—use its technology to offer their own customers banking products like checking accounts, credit cards, loans or payment services. Launched in December 2020, Unit works with five partner banks and now counts more than 200 customers, who pay a monthly base fee to access the platform and additional fees based on the number of users, transactions and applications they push through it. Last year, Unit processed over $4 billion in transaction volume, and deposits climbed to more than $370 million.
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $170 million from Insight Partners, Accel, Aleph and others.
Latest valuation: $1.2 billion.
Bona fides: End customers using Unit technology skyrocketed 170% last year from 300,000 to 810,000.
Cofounders: CEO Itai Damti, 37, and CTO Doron Somech, 38, serial entrepreneurs who met as software engineers for the Israeli military and then cofounded a software-as-a-service firm.
Vestwell
The platform serves as the engine powering savings plans, including 401(k)s, 529 college savings plans, and workplace IRAs promoted by states. Overall, it’s serving 30,000 small businesses and more than 1 million individual savers, up from 165,000 savers at the end of 2021. Vestwell has landed sponsorships with 30 state-sponsored savings programs including RetirePath Virginia, OregonSaves and California’s CalABLE. (ABLE accounts are state-run savings programs, similar to 529s, for disability-related expenses.)
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $150 million from Fin Capital, Goldman Sachs, Fintech Collective and others.
Latest valuation: $380 million.
Bona fides: Revenue more than tripled from $7 million to $24 million in 2022.
Founder and CEO: Aaron Schumm, 45, sold previous wealth management fintech FolioDynamix to Envestnet.
VizyPay
Offers pared-down payment processing services for small business owners in rural areas. Its monthly subscription service helps merchants offset up to 100% of their credit and debit card fees by automating price adjustments for cash and card payments. The bootstrapped company counts local businesses like car dealerships and restaurants among its clients. VizyPay had 14,021 customers at the end of 2022, up from 10,845 at the end of 2021.
Headquarters: Waukee, Iowa.
Funding: Bootstrapped.
Bona fides: Processed $1.7 billion worth of payments in 2022, up from $1.2 billion in 2021.
Cofounders: CEO Austin Mac Nab, 39, a former executive sales director at payment processing company Central Payment; managing partner Frank Pagano, 46.
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