Fintech Startups London & UK 2021 Guide #1 BEST FINTECH COMPANIES UK

Fintech Startups London & UK 2021 Guide #1 BEST FINTECH COMPANIES UK

The UK capital is one of the largest financial hubs in both Europe and the world with the London Stock Exchange having a captialisation in excess of $4.5 Trillion and is the world’s largest exporter of financial services.

And one rapidly growing sector that is powered by innovation, it’s financial technology

But who are the big players on the financial technology London scene?

Click the button to jump straight to the new fintech players on the block…

But before w go to our guide, if you are a fintech startup looking to hire talent you can get in contact with Rainmakrr here

Fintech Startups London

In this list we cover the financial technology brands and scale ups you should be watching out for in 2021

Starling Bank

Starling is a new app only challenger bank has made an impact on the UK financial scene since it received its banking licence in 2016 picking up no fewer than three gongs at the 2019 Smart Money People British Bank Awards including Best British Bank, Best Business Banking Provider and Best Current Account Provider.

Starling was the first brand in the UK to launch a mobile-only current account and also offers business accounts which is a great advantage as well as all the features you’d expect from a high street bank.

As a result of this Starling Bank is close to £1 billion and will start turning a profit this year. Like, actually making money as a startup.

Impressive….

“We, as usual, like to do things differently – the Starling way,” said Boden. “And what we’re doing now is expanding our product range and innovation hand in hand with growing our businesses, with a clear path to reaching profitability.”

Expect in 2020 to see Starling expand into Europe.

TrueLayer

With its proprietary API, TrueLayer gives smaller startups access banking data while avoiding – like all APIs – the need to build, design and maintain their own systems.

“Open Banking is about much more than liberalizing the finance industry to increase competition and reduce costs,” said Cofounder and CEO of TrueLayer, Francesco Simoneschi. “It is also about raising security standards and protecting consumers and businesses. Online fraud ripples out and raises costs for everyone making card payments.”

TrueLayer has already launched a beta of its own Payments API.

This API enables businesses to start accepting cash via payments through Open Banking

Trussle as a result have signed big deals with Zopa, BitBond, ClearScore and Anorak, amongst many others.

With so many new and huge markets to enter and almost endless potential partners to partner with, TrueLayer has “true” (Ed: groan….) potential to hyper grow their revenues in 2020 as they fine tune their offer.

Nutmeg

Nutmeg thinks it’s one of the fintech UK companies with a difference by not developing complex algorithms to make decisions on behalf of its customers and instead relies on human beings to perform this role.

So 70s….

But that hasn’t stopping Nutmeg enjoying significant growth with over 50,000 customers causing Banking (Ed: removed through fear…) Goldman Sachs to invest in a funding round of $58 million.

“Our customers are our greatest advocates and we wanted to give them an opportunity to invest in, as well as with, a business they’ve helped to make a success,” 

Martin Stead

Nutmeg CEO and Director

Funding Circle

Funding Circle is one of the largest UK peer-to-peer lenders and the first to go public with close to 50,000 small to medium-sized UK businesses borrowing a total of £5 billion on its platform.

Funding Circle has had some ups and downs since it went public but recently announced a record year so lets watch this space

“In the third quarter, loans under management reached £3.7 billion and projected returns for 2019 continued to show an improvement over recent years,”

Co-founder and CEO
Samir Desai.

Fundamentally Funding Circle pairs up small and amateur lenders with small loan-takers.

Monese

Monese offers current accounts and money transfers to a new generation of consumers and has a good reputation for its quick and simple application process.

In September 2019, Monese raised a gigantic $60 million in series B funding led by Kinnevik and others including PayPal so watch this space!

Monzo

Monzo is probably the most known fintech company has produced recently.

Winners of the Best Banking App gong at the Smart Money People awards and was at the time of press just behind Starling in terms of revenues.

Monzo entered the fray as a challenger bank scene in 2015 focussing on developing an intuitive banking experience for customers and were very much successful in this ambition and is now holding around $1.1 billion in deposits

“we’re literally the safest bank you could possibly imagine, because the money just sits in the central bank. It seems bizarre. Anyone from another bank who looks at our balance sheet just scratches their head. They can’t understand it. Unless the UK fails as a country, that money is safe.”

CEO Tom Blomfield

Receipt Bank

Receipt Bank offers its clients cloud computing with AI and data handling thrown in which means Receipt Bank helps them saves time and effort by enabling the automatic compilation of accounts and expenses.

Through this process users are able to download spreadsheets and reports and connect up the platform with their existing software and has been embraced by clients.

Trussle

The mortgage space and InsureTech and Lending in general is one that has traditionally found itself highly resistant to digital transformation.

Well that as we know is all changing and online broker Trussle is a high profile entry to our fintech startups London list as its mortgage comparison platform seems to be breaking out.

Trussle doees this by scanning different lenders to find customers the best mortgages available and then continuously monitors the market post-sale to help its clients identify and switch to better deals later.

How frigging cool is that!

Cleo

Chatbots are massive and have never been easier to build thanks to the advances of both middleware and artificial intelligence software.

Enter Cleo, which is an AI chatbot that connects users Facebook accounts and helps them manage their finances better to track their expenditure and savings. And this process helps them save money and plan for the future better

Which we all need…

Curve

Using the Curve app which works with Google, Apple and Samsung Pay, you can now access all your cards via a single card and PIN combo, doing away the need to have a wallet full of cards.

You can even “go back in time” up to 14 days and switch payment options after the payment has been made and transfer money. How cool is that?

With such a great product Curve could really be on the up curve in 2020 (Ed: groan…)

Curve is to Banking what Netflix is to TV and Spotify to Music. We connect All Your Cards in One* Smart Card. And One Even Smarter App. We bring you financial freedom and endless opportunities. All in One place. Simply One-derful.

Curve

Revolut

Revolut is providing a digital alternative to traditional banking by using prepaid cards and peer-to-peer payments and supports several cryptocurrencies on its platform.

Revolut has had some brand and culture challenges reportedly but the company is now recording an average of 3.7 million monthly active users, and an average of 1.2+ million daily active users so things could very much work out for Revolut with years of growth ahead them highly likely.

Transferwise

Founded by Kristo Kaarmann, a former manager at Deloitte, and Taavet Hinrikus, an angel investor and former Strategy Director at Skype, Transferwise is no longer a Fintech London company spring chicken and possibly the most well known Fintech startup of recent years.

Transferwise broke into the marketing by allowing users to send money abroad with exchange rates eight times cheaper than most mainstream banks and also allowing users to send money easily, cheaply, safely, and quickly.

Recently Visa announced that TransferWise will begin offering its customers an additional capability to quickly and securely move money to debit cards in real-time, so watch this space as TransferWise continues to improve it’s offering and move increasingly into the mainstream

Portify

Portify  is one of the first UK fintech companies UK to address the financial volatility many flexible workers face, offering essential financial products to help users build credit, budget and save, via a single secure mobile app.

Portify has raised £8.3M in venture investment in a funding round led by Redalpine, Kindred Capital and Entrepreneur First.

With participation by leading investors in the fintech and technology sectors and now has over 20,000 members, partnering with leading gig economy platforms to help modern workers to take control of their finances.

Sumup

SumUp is mobile payments company that provides card readers to smaller businesses for them to use without a contract.

They take a 1.69% cut of payments made using the terminal but provide an easy and cost-effective way for businesses to make transactions.

The company recently bought Shoplo, a Poland-based multichannel eCommerce platform that allows small businesses to start selling online.

As part of SumUp’s expansion strategy, they also acquired Danish company Debitoor, an invoicing-software platform originally established for freelancers and SMEs.

In 2019 SumUp, announced that it has raised a from Bain Capital Credit, Goldman Sachs Private Capital, HPS Investment Partners, and TPG Sixth Street Partners.

SumUp plans to use this capital to accelerate its growth and acquire new merchants in its current and new markets across the globe.

The funds will be used to continue expanding SumUp’s product suite, both organically and through more acquisitions such as the acquisition of Debitoor, for accounting and Shoplo for ecommerce.

Checkout.com

This little-known fintech was founded in 2009 under a different name before evolving into Checkout.com in 2012 and have since grown to a team of more than 300 employees in eight offices, expanding into the UAE in 2013, and the US in 2017.

Checkout.com enables companies to process and accept cross-border payments from credit and debit cards, online banking, Apple Pay and others such as Klarna – all with a single integration.

As a result Checkout is considered a direct rival to the huge Dutch payment titan Adyen, which is listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange.

Checkout.com provides online payment solutions for a number of growing businesses and has reported $46.8m in total revenues in 2017 according to their Companies House filings, a 56% up on the previous year.

The company’s clients include Samsung, TransferWise, Adidas and Virgin and was ranked 2nd place in Deloitte’s UK Technology Fast 50.

Thought Machine

Thought Machine believe many banks have an ambition to deliver better technology to their customers, but are held back by legacy platforms and technology. Cost of change is huge, and the cost of operations is too expensive because of an inability to automate processes.

They spend an incredible amount just to stand still and Thought Machine intend to deliver a new era in banking using truly cloud native technology.

Hastee

Hastee  is an award-winning employee benefit that enables workers to take a portion of their earned pay, on demand. Increasing choice and financial wellbeing.

In 2020 everything is on demand; TV shows, shopping, ice cream – everything, that is, except for when we get paid. Hastee is here to change that.

Hastee allows workers to access a portion of their earned pay as soon as they’ve earnt it – with, importantly,  no financial impact on your business and seamless payroll and time & attendance integration.

Mojo Mortgages

Mojo’s API’s to help lenders offer their customer’s personalised whole-of-market comparison and access to free real-time mortgage advice all from within their app or website

Primary Bid

Primary Bid is a technology platform that allows everyday investors fair access to public companies raising capital.

PrimaryBid always ensures that retail investors transact at the same time and at the same price as institutional investors.

Through our long-term agreement with London Stock Exchange, we have created the infrastructure to seamlessly connect everyday investors with public companies when it matters most.

Soldo

Soldo let’s you as a company take control of company spending with Soldo, the prepaid Mastercard® that does your expenses for you.

It provides companies from 1 to 1,000+ employees with a unified solution to manage spending and expenses and their multi-user setup features bespoke budgets and rules for each card, empowering staff to spend across multiple channels with automation, visibility and insight.

Soldo also integrates directly with Xero and Quickbooks to make expense report and reconciliation a thing of the past

Paid

Paid allows you to find new value in your suppliers by using their specially-designed automation to smooth internal collaboration and process.

By doing this Paid can help to reduce time and costs spent managing suppliers by up to 10x.

Tumelo

Tumelo was established at Cambridge University, where our founders campaigned for the sustainable investment of their university’s £6 billion fund and their vision is a world where millions of investors have transparency over the companies they own and a shareholder voice to transform the investment system to serve both people and planet.

Tumelo’s mission as an impact-focused financial technology firm is to enable retail investors and pension members to create and benefit from a more sustainable investment system.

Tumelo do this by partnering with investment and pension providers, enabling them to provide their customers with transparency over the companies they own and a shareholder voice on issues they care about, such as gender equality or climate change.

By providing white-label software delivered via APIs and a user dashboard, Tumelo help investment and pension platforms transform slow engagement metrics into positive retention, acquisition and brand opportunities.

They recognised a global problem: Millions of ordinary people contribute to our investment system through ISAs, workplace pensions, and other investments yet have no visibility over where their money is going and no voice at the companies they own through those investments. The result? A society that is disengaged and an investment system that is broken.

So, Tumelo was created to change this. Tumelo engage investors on issues they care about at companies they own. In doing so, we help investment firms engage with their clients so they can better serve people and protect our planet.

WealthTech Startups

With the UK capital being a leading world hub for finance and the defacto home base for some of the largest wealth management and hedge funds combined with the booming fintech sector it’s no surprise that the city is punching above it’s weight in wealth technology as well as the larger fintech category so let’s look and some of the movers and shakers in this category

MoneyFarm

MoneyFarm was created to help people make better decisions with their money.

So many people pay too much to have their money managed, trade too often, or even too little, and this is costing them over time.

With the right asset allocation, a long term perspective and tight management of both cost and risk, people can achieve more with their money.

With their digital investment advice and fully managed portfolios they’ve helped thousands of people to make better investment decisions.

Emerging Wealth Startups London

Rerbium

Rerbium is the first business to introduce WM-as-a-Service so that Banks, Neo-Banks and Financial institutions can offer investment products and wealth management tools to their customers.

Rerbium have connected to multiple investment fintechs and merged everything into a single API and have gone one step further and are a building powerful wealth management tools that, up to now, have only been available to wealthy individuals.

CapDesk

Capdesk helps you streamline your equity plans and report to financial authorities with absolute confidence. The most flexible private equity solution made in Europe.

Capdesk now connects with Europe’s largest private secondary market helping you convert equity into cash. Go have a look today and Unleash the Motivational Power of Equity!

Fly Now Pay Later

Fly Now Pay Later allows you to fly anywhere and spread the cost of your trip in flexible monthly instalments from 0% APR*. 

Empower your customers to spread the cost of their holidays in flexible monthly instalments with the Fly Now Pay Later app.

Upside

Upside harvest the “upside” from your spending – so you can simply watch the savings addup and promise to help you make Effortless Savings That Grow As You Spend

Credit Kudos

Credit Kudos is an FCA-authorised credit bureau and Open Banking Account Information Service Provider (AISP) that uses financial behaviour to measure creditworthiness.

Through direct connections to the UK’s largest banks, Credit Kudos aggregates and interprets transaction data for use by lenders, brokers, and financial institutions. Credit Kudos goes beyond traditional scoring, providing a comprehensive view of a borrower’s creditworthiness. We transform complex sets of information in our easy-to-use, digital first tools to help everyone make better lending decisions.

After working in the US for a number of years, Freddy returned to the UK. Having had no recent financial activity in the UK, he had a ‘thin’ credit file. This not only meant that he had limited credit options, but those that were available to him came with higher interest rates and restrictions.

After further research it became apparent that he was not alone and that many people in the UK face difficulties when trying to get access to affordable credit.

With a vision to remove that challenge from the market, Freddy and Matt founded Credit Kudos. Since then, the team at Credit Kudos have been on a mission to provide fair credit for all, harnessing the power of Open Banking.

Open Fin

Open Fin are building built the operating system of finance to modernize desktops and accelerate innovation.

Their mission is to provide a unifying foundation for the next generation of financial industry applications.

Launched in 2010, OpenFin OS is now used to deploy thousands of industry apps to over 1500 sell-side and buy-side firms.

Primer

Primer is in beta stealth mode currently and aims to consolidate your payments stack with a unified API, and supercharges your checkout with data driven insights.

Habito

Habito will get you the best mortgage possible. Fast, transparent and impartial – we’ll take care of it. Using a unique combination of cutting edge technology and industry-leading mortgage experts, homebuyers can, for the first time, be sure they are getting the best deal for them. Whether you’re a first-time buyer, you’re moving, remortgaging, or simply taking back control of your finances, a mortgage is a big decision – it’s no surprise that 4 out of 5 people seek advice from a broker.

fintech startups london

Unlike a traditional broker, our technology analyses every mortgage on the market from over 70 lenders to find the best one for you in seconds. Once we find you the right mortgage, we’ll be with you every step of the way. You’ll have a dedicated mortgage expert who will keep you updated with the progress of your application from start to finish, and will always be on the end of the phone or live chat to answer your questions.

Plum

Plum s the AI assistant that boosts your bank balance. It analyses your income and outgoings and automatically sets small safe amounts of money aside for you. You can also invest* in hand-picked funds and switch your bills to better deals instantly. We estimate that, with the help of Plum, you can be £186k better off over your lifetime!

So how does Plum work?

(1) Link your current account: Plum analyses your account so it can learn about your income, expenses and spending patterns. Your data is safe with us – we employ bank-grade security and work with the main UK banks and challengers like Monzo and Revolut.

(2) Plum sets money aside for you: Plum monitors your current account and every few days moves some money, if you can afford to, to your Plum account. You can access that money instantly at any time, so you don’t have to worry about unexpected expenses.

(3) Chat with Plum: Plum notifies you about your balance, gives you super-fast access to your money and offers tips on how to save more.

Fortu

Fortu are new to our fintech startups london guide as they are a borderless, private, personal finance solution for high-net-worth individuals and businesses requiring secure, reliable and international financial reach.

Railsbank

Railsbank s the pioneer and innovator in the global Banking as a Platform (BaaP) sector, enabling banks, businesses and brands to define the future of consumer and SME finance.

Currently, Railsbank is live and enabling customers in the UK, Europe, SE Asia and the US. It is the only global BaaP player. The Railsbank platform enables marketers, product managers, developers to take their financial product vision and rapidly prototype, launch and scale their vision using its open finance platform, financial operations, regulatory licensing and rich set of APIs.

Using Railsbank’s super simple APIs as building blocks, customers can build pretty much any financial use-case they can imagine, freeing up Railsbank customers to focus on delivering delightful finance experiences to consumers and businesses. Railsbank’s unique ability to innovate at speed was recently highlighted with the launch and implementation of LightningAid.org (helping people and businesses survive financially through the pandemic), which went from “idea to Apple app store” in just eight days.

Yapily

Yapily enable businesses and consumers around the world to share data and access payment infrastructure. We connect businesses to thousands of banks through a secure open API. Taking care of the complexity and management of connections, saving businesses time and money. As the world moves towards an open economy, we exist to power the innovative solutions that will ultimately transform the way we all interact with financial products and services.

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