5 Biggest Fintech Companies in the World
In the last decade, the financial technology industry (or fintech for short) has become one of today’s fastest-growing tech industries. But since this might be a new term to plenty of people worldwide, we might need to clarify its meaning. Fintech refers to any type of financial technology, mostly conducted by companies that employ newly developed digital and online technologies in the banking and financial service industries. Some of the most prominent examples of successful companies that operate in the Fintech industry are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Apple, Facebook and even Google. But for these companies, it’s not the financial technology that’s their priority. Other companies worldwide who are unknown to the general public yet are incredibly important players in the Fintech world as well. Take a look at the 5 most prominent and most important Fintech companies in the world.
Ant Financial
One of the biggest Fintech companies globally and definitely one with the biggest business value is the China-based company Ant Financial. This Fintech company is based in Hangzhou city in China and is Alibaba group’s spin-off company. It was founded in 2014, and today, this company runs several giants such as AliPay, Ant Fortune, and Ant Financial Cloud. Ant Financial also owns the world’s third-largest money market fund, Yu’e Bao, and a private credit rating system, Sesame Credit.
Klarna
Klarna might not be the company with the most significant business value, but it’s definitely the Fintech company that can really do marketing. If you take a look at their Instagram account, you will not be able to stop yourself from pressing the “Follow” button. Klarna is Sweden’s largest fintech company founded in 2005, and it provides payment and financial solutions to businesses, including debt collection services and even credit payment. It was initially created in order to provide merchants and consumers simpler and safer payment methods, and today it is valued at $5.5 billion. Due to its success, Klarna got a celebrity shareholder – Snoop Dogg became a minor shareholder of Klarna in 2019. Klarna is also the owner of one of the most popular local payment methods, Sofort.
Adyen
When we’re talking about Europe, we cannot fail to mention this continent’s biggest fintech company, Adyen, which is right now valued at $22 billion. This company allows merchants and businesses to send and receive payments from any point of the world through various card networks, most prominently VISA and Mastercards. Apart from that, they work with local payment methods as well. Adyen was founded in 2006 and has since been an important player in this industry. They still grow rapidly and have an impressive pool of clients such as Uber, Facebook, Netflix, L’Oreal, Microsoft, and Spotify. According to Statista, Adyen’s revenue has increased more than four times from 2015 to 2019.
Stripe
Another huge payment processing service allowing its users to send and receive online payments is Stripe, a vast and very successful fintech company. Stripe is at the moment valued at $36 billion, and the first major investment (of $2 million) was made by the co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel. Stripe is also one of the fintech companies that made the most significant rise, mostly due to its technological supremacy.
Robinhood
Being somewhat different from the mentioned companies, Robinhood Markets Inc. is also one of today’s leading fintech companies. It is an online discount broker company plus an electronic trading platform. Robinhood allows customers worldwide to invest in publicly traded companies and exchange-traded funds listed in the US stock exchange. Moreover, this is yet another company that was supported by world-known celebrities, in this case, Jay Z and Beyonce. At the moment, Robinhood is valued at $11.2 billion.
Even though these are just 5 of the most important and most successful fintech companies globally, there are still many more that are doing remarkable business. Fintech is also one of the continually growing and developing industries, which is one of the reasons why plenty of new fintechs companies start their business every year. Perhaps we will be seeing another player listed here in a couple of years? If you’re interested in working in the fintech industry and want to be a part of the biggest fintech hub in Serbia, take a look at our vacancies and apply if you find something that suits you!
