With £6.6 billion of yearly revenue, the UK’s fintech industry is a mighty beast and a home to some of the youngest fintech disruptors. It should be expected because the UK, which was recognized as the world’s best fintech hub, knows its way around cultivating an appropriate environment for economic and technological innovations. According to the Global Innovation Index, the United Kingdom was the fifth most innovative country in the world in 2019 and the first European tech innovator in KPMG’s Global Technology Innovation report. In addition, the UK introduced an open banking initiative, which helped to boost the digital finance industry.
Currently, there are over 1600 fintech firms in the UK, and this number is expected to double in the 2030s. As follows, the emerging digital banking companies are numerous, and they come in different tastes and flavours. Unfortunately, not all of them will see through to stable success as it often happens with startups. However, the number of bright fintech rookies is surprisingly impressive.
The future holds a lot of interesting perspectives for the fintech industry and its clients. We gathered the top of the young UK fintech startups founded after 2014, which forge this future.
1. Monzo
2. Rapyd
3. ClearBank
4. Tide
5. Jaja Finance
6. 10x Banking
7. Curve
8. Modulr
9. Habito
10. Wagestream
The fintech startups in this list presented in no particular order.
1. Monzo
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: London
Funds Raised: £324m
Monzo is a digital-only bank that provides users with accounts and a variety of banking and money management features. Monzo preaches the intuitiveness and simplicity of the UX. As of the end of 2019, Monzo had more than 3 million users with an additional 200.000 clients every month. The bank’s last funding round brought the company £113 million. In addition, the fintech company plans to release a prepaid card in the US with a partner bank, which would significantly expand their customer base.
In 2017, Monzo’s annual per-customer contribution margin was -£65 (yes, that’s a minus). As of May 2019, it reached +£4. Steadily and surely the fintech disruptor grows its revenue to reach a net positive result in the near future.
Monzo relies on transparency, strong governance, risk management, and compliance.
2. Rapyd
Founded: 2016
Headquarters: London
Funds Raised: £160m
Rapyd is a fintech-as-a-service company that provides its customers with APIs with functionality intended to
– collect and disburse funds in any local currency
– issue cards
– extend e-wallet functionality
– manage KYC and compliance processes
Currently, the company functions in more than 100 countries with 900 locally preferred payment methods.
Rapyd is a rapid grower. According to the firm’s CEO, Arik Shtilman, the total payments volume on the platform has grown fivefold in 2019, and the company’s revenue is expected to triple in 2020.
The main idea behind Rapyd is to create “great local commerce experiences anywhere.”
3. ClearBank
Founded: 2015
Location: London
Funds Raised: £104m
Clearbank is a clearing bank that uses cloud technology to streamline the process and ensure seamless integration. The clearing is a process that settles payments among banks. A clearing bank finalizes financial transactions and ensures that a payee receives the full value of the cheque. For those interested, the fintech company a short but detailed video that explains Clearbank and its place in the banking ecosystem.
Clearbank’s CEO describes his company as a “bank for banks,” and it already enables billions of dollars of transactions.
4. Tide
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: London
Funds Raised: £79.5m
Tide is a mobile-first fintech provider for small- to middle-sized businesses. Tide allows users to conduct everyday banking operations and includes
– the possibility to manage several accounts
– auto categories
– integration with a company’s accounting system
– creation and payment of invoices.
Currently, Tide has offices in England, India, and Bulgaria and powers more than 130 thousand clients. Tide’s clientele owns various businesses, which include bakeries, cushion covers producers, cooking clubs, personal coaching endeavors, and much more.
Tide’s primary purpose is to cut costs and free people’s time, so the entrepreneurs can have more space to grow their business and creating value.
5. Jaja Finance
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: London
Funds Raised: £35m
Envisioned in Norway and made a reality in the UK, Jaja Finance is a mobile- and digital-first credit card provider. Jaja rebuilt the concept of the credit card, creating digital and physical credit card solutions with a client in mind. Jaja’s product has a strong focus on the personalization of the services they provide. The company is an innovative and adaptive fintech startup, which is not afraid of experimentation and testing new waters.
Most recently, Jaja bought the bank of Ireland’s UK credit card business for some $670M. In addition, the fintech company will be an issuer of the credit cards for the Bank’s UK business and the UK’s Automobile Association.
Jaja strives to simplify and customize the world of credit and make it more “down to earth” so any person can use it without being anxious about hidden fees and other not-so-pleasant surprises.
6. 10x Banking
Founded: 2016
Headquarters: London
Funds Raised: £50m
10x Banking created a cloud-based digital banking platform for financial companies. At the core of the system that the company provides is a 10x SuperCore platform, which is used to ensure that customer data is not duplicated anywhere in the system for security purposes.
10x Banking provides its clients with a bunch of advantages:
– ensures easy product creation and deployment
– reduces time to market
– helps cut development costs
– creates real-time bank customer records to ease the onboarding process.
10x Banking’s purpose is straightforward — to make digital banking ten times more convenient.
7. Curve
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: London
Funds Raised: £58m
Curve is a card aggregator and management tool. In other words, Curve connects a user’s accounts to a single smart card, which, in turn, is managed via Android or iOS apps. No matter how many Visas or Mastercards a person has, he or she can manage all of them using a single Curve card and application.
So far, Curve has Apple Pay support, is available in 31 countries within the European Economic Area, and has more than 800.000 customers. A cherry on the top is Curve’s ambitious goal to become an “Amazon of Banking.”
“One card to rule them all” is Curve’s motto.
8. Modulr
Founded: 2016
Location: Edinburg
Funds Raised: £34m
Modulr is a digital payment account/payments as a service platform for businesses to achieve faster and a more convenient way of moving their finances. After the integration with the system, the companies are free to create as many accounts as they wish and automate payments and reconciling.
Recently, Modulr became one of a few “non-bank Payment Service Provider participants of Bacs.” Bacs is one of the most popular payment methods in the country. As a result, Modulr has full control over Bacs payment flows and doesn’t have to rely on third-party providers. Besides, Modulr powers Revolut, another powerful UK fintech startup
As far as London is a leading financial center of the world and the heart of the UK’s fintech industry, most of the disrupting and bright fintech contenders are founded there. Modulr, which began its journey in Scotland, is a fresh exception.
9. Habito
Founded: 2016
Location: London
Funds Raised: £30m
Habito is a digital mortgage broker and lender. Habito provides customers with the possibility to compare, apply, automate, and track the progress of the mortgages using the website. In addition, Habito provides a mortgage expert to help users figure out the best deal.
Furthermore, Habito began to “direct lending via its own range of mortgages” as well as life insurances. Last year, Habito was featured in the Fintech 50, which is a European high-growth fintech companies list.
Habito deals with the bureaucratic “hell,” helping its clients to sort out the not-so-user-friendly world of mortgages.
10. Wagestream
Founded: 2018
Location: London
Funds Raised: £60m
Wagestream is an app that gives employees “real-time” access to their wages in order to boost productivity and reduce stress. With Wagestream, workers don’t have to wait until the end of the month to receive their monetary reward and can access money as it is earned.
The fintech innovator charges employees a small fee for each withdrawal of the money and transfers all money to their bank accounts at the end of a month. Considering the unique purpose of Wagstream, the company is also backed by charitable organizations.
Conclusion
There is a feature the aforementioned young fintech disruptors have in common — the desire to change the ways of traditional financial services in order to make them closer to people and easier to use. Creating a successful, reliable, and appealing fintech app is not an easy feat. It requires deep technological and design expertise, experience, knowledge of the regulatory environment, and business analysis capabilities.
If you need a technological partner that can
– Conduct a thorough analysis to create accurate blueprints for relevant digital product
– Develop a secure and reliable application with an appealing and easy-to-use interface
– Provide business analysis and development services
Then our experience in developing fintech applications for different markets and experienced BA team can come in handy for you.
You can check our portfolio
Please consider, not all of our projects are displayed there because of the NDAs. We can elaborate on our experience more if you wish after you contact us.
Contact us, and we, KindGeek, will help you develop a fintech product people like and trust.