The FinTech 50 has revealed the businesses that are most likely to be a big name in the world of finance.
The companies vary from invoice sharing applications to currency transfer and everything else in-between, with the majority coming from the UK.
Out of the 50 start-ups named, an impressive 29 come from London, with two further coming from the UK.
The start-ups selected come from across the whole of Europe and there is no ranking system.
CBR looks at 10 of the fintech start-ups selected in the 2016 Fintech 50 that have come from the UK and looks at what they do.
1. Algomi
Founded in 2012, the London based Algomi uses a Honeycomb system that helps banks to create a virtual balance sheet that is based on actual bond data. The data includes trade information, enquiries, and holdings and is designed to let buy-side firms see this virtual balance sheet at the banks.
In a period of 12 months, Algomi signed up 150 buy-side firms and 15 banks across APAC, US and EMEA to Honeycomb.
Stu Taylor is the CEO & founder alongside other co-founders Rob Howes, Usman Khan and Michael Schmidt. The company was recently boosted by the addition of former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer joining as a strategic adviser.
2. Blockchain
Founded in 2011 as ‘the world’s most popular Bitcoin wallet’ the London based Blockchain now has six million users and $30.5 million in funding from investors such as Lightspeed.
The company become the first Bitcoin venture to hit five million users in 2015 and in the same year doubled the number of transactions processing through its wallets and APIs.
Now with offices in London, New York and Luxembourg, the company was recently named one of the best companies in the world to work for.
Nicolas Cary is the CEO and founder, Ben Reeves and Peter Smith are also co-founders.
3. Callsign
Founded in 2011, the company delivers multimodal biometrics, offering a military-grade security platform that has over 50 analytics captured and processed in real-time.
It is designed to deliver cyber intelligence capabilities that provides a clear view of which user, at what location and on what device, is performing a given transaction.
Headquartered in London, Zia Hayat is the CEO and founder.
4. Digital Shadows
A cyber situational awareness start-up from London, Digital Shadows was part of the Accenture Innovation Lab London in 2011. In February the company announced a $14m Series B funding round.
The company’s flagship product is SearchLight, which is a continuous real-time scan of more than 100 million data sources online, and on the deep and dark web. It works by cross referencing customer specific data with the monitored sources in order to flag up any instances where data may have inadvertently been posted online.
The service also monitors threat-related chatter about the company, so it helps to identify any potential hackers discussing attack vectors.
Alastair Paterson is the CEO and founder and James Chapell is co-founder.
5. Iwoca
Another company founded in 2011, iwoca provides instant working capital. Actually launching in 2012, the company provides money lending services.
Since its launch it has issues over £70m to 4000+ businesses across the UK, Poland, Spain and Germany with issuance to new customers increasing by 360%.
The London based company has annual revenue that tops £5m and raised $20m equity in a Series B round in July 2015.
The company has set lofty goals of lending to at least a million businesses across Europe within a decade. This plan has been boosted by the firm opening its credit-as-a-service to Alibaba last year, this is so that it can offer trade finance to small businesses importing from China.
Chris Rieche in the CEO and founder and James Dear is a co-founder.
6. MarketInvoice
MarketInvoice provides trade invoices for finance by letting businesses sign up, sell an invoice and draw down funds on the same day with no contracts, hidden fees or personal guarantees.
In one month in 2015 the company saw businesses using the service raise over $30m, and collected nearly £270m in repayments. The company also passed a milestone of £600m worth of finance lent, and 10,000 separate loans to UK businesses.
It is not used on average over 13 times per year and has a default rate of 1.9%, and a crystallised loss of 0.003%.
The peer-to-peer finance company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in London.
Anil Stocker is the CEO and founder, Ilya Kondrashov and Charlie Delingpole are co-founders.
7. Pockit
One of the younger companies on the list, Pockit was founded in 2013 with the goal of banking the unbanked.
The London based company provides underserved and unbanked consumers in the UK an account into which they can get salaries and benefits paid, or find with cash at 28,000 locations in the UK.
A card allows customers to transact online and on the high street. It basically operates as a bank account, letting customers pay bills and share money with friends and family.
In three years the company has grown a 60,000 customer base and processed £30m in 2015. During 2015 it grew by 500% on metrics such as customers, money in, money out, balances held on account and revenue.
The company has also signed distribution partnerships with two housing associations in the UK.
Virraj Jatania is the CEO and founder.
8. Ravelin
Ravelin the youngest company on this list having been founded in 2015, it offers fraud detection for the on-demand economy.
Ravelin works by examining visitor and payment data in real-time and can tell systems which customers to allow, prevent, or flag for review.
Since it started in January 2015, the company has acquired 13 staff and has had two round of funding that totals £1.6m.
The company has built a scalable platform that has developed machine learning models that are reducing fraud by over 50% month over month, all in the cloud.
The company has products aimed at transport, mobile payments and deliveries.
Headquartered in London, the company’s CEO and founder is Martin Sweeney; Mairtin O’Raida, Leonard Austin and Nick Lally are co-founders.
9. RateSetter
RateSetter is one of the older companies in the list having been founded in 2010. Operating in the lending B2C market, the company has seen investors lend over $1bn through RateSetter.
In 2016 it became the first marketplace lender to publish details of how its Innovative Finance ISA is a new form of ISA that gives lenders access to tax-free returns from the money lent via a P2P site.
The company has four different products that offer terms from one month to five years with interest rates of up to 5.7%.
Headquartered in London, the company’s CEO and founder is Rhydian Lewis; Peter Behrens is co-founder.
10. Contego
Contego offers a real-time fraud solution that came about after founder and CEO Adrian Black worked with the police, AutoTrader,eBay and others to create VSTAG.
VSTAG is an industry forum that is designed to combat fraud in automotive advertising. After chairing VSTAG, the founder identified ways of sharing data and intelligence to verify entities and highlight fraud risks.
A pilot project led to the first iteration of Contego. Since it was founded in 2011 the company has created partnerships with the likes of IBM and Amazon Web Services.
The company was accepted into Accenture’s 2016 Innovation Lab and has created to major initiatives. One is integrating Bureau van Dijk international company data; and expanding its Creditsafe offering to cover over 20 markets.
The company is headquartered in Abingdon, making it one of only two in the UK selected outside of London.
Comment
The dominance of start-ups selected in the UK and in particular London, highlights the strength of the country when it comes to producing innovative fintech companies, however, questions have been raised about the lack of diversity.
Tom Price-Daniel, Director at Alderbrooke, said: "The 2016 FinTech 50 has once again highlighted the extreme lack of diversity across the industry, with only two of the selected companies operating with female CEOs.
"As an industry that is dominated by start-ups, companies in this sector are actually in a perfect position to buck this trend by creating the policies, culture and governance that are needed to ensure women can make it to the top level."
This is an issue that needs to be tackled and these start-ups are in a good position to help remedy this problem.
Special mention should also be made of the UK start-ups that have entered the FinTech 50 hall of fame. These are companies that have been recognised for their staying power at the forefront of fintech.
Companies in the hall of fame include: Currency Cloud, Funding Circle, Nutmeg, Transferwise, WorldRemit, Zopa and Adyen.
