Fintech

Fintech is the intersection between finance and technology. The following categorization is constantly evolving to keep up with the sector evolution. ABN AMRO Ventures, our main partner for Fintech and a leading Fintech CVC also contributed to this taxonomy. This taxonomy is also reflected on the fintech platform.


The fintech industry in Dealroom is broken down into the 8 sub-industries below:

Sub-industry

Description

Example

Payments

Startups developing solutions to improve the way financial transactions are settled, and how money is transferred between two parties.

KlarnaTransferwiseCheckout

Banking

Startups developing solutions, and/or digitising the activities, services and products of traditional banks.

RevolutNubankMambu

Crypto and Defi

Startups developing solutions for the use and exchange cryptocurrencies or financial startups using cryptocurrencies as a core feature in their business.

CoinbaseRippleChainanalysis

Wealth Management

Startups developing solutions assisting in investment decision-making or providing a way to invest in assets, stocks, securities and other assets.

RobinhoodScalable capitalRaisin

Mortgages & Lending

Startups developing solutions enabling digital lending (loans, lending platforms), providing online mortgage brokerage services, providing finance for individuals and businesses.

ZopaLendinvestMonedo

Insurance

Insurtech is the intersection between insurance and technology. It includeds startups providing insurance services with digital-first and innovative models, or helping insurers, agents and brokers increase the efficiency of their processes

LemonadeAlanwefox

Financial Management Solutions

Solutions such as software and algorithms helping companies and consumers better manage their financial operations and processes. Eg: accounting software, billing software.

TaxfixSpendeskLinxo

RegTech

Solutions to comply with regulatory requirements in financial services, from customer identification (KYC), anti-money laundering, fraud detection and compliance & reporting.

FourthlineComplyadvantageCappitech


Curated landscapes and lists

The easiest way to navigate curated content such as landscapes and lists is to use the curated content panel. Below is an overview of the content featured: 

  • Impact & Sustainability 
  • Payments 
  • Banking
  • Crypto & Defi
  • Wealth Management 
  • Mortgages & Lending
  • Insurance
  • Financial Management Solutions
  • Regtech


Impact & sustainability:

  • Fintech for good: fintech and software startups working on impact. From green finance such as impact investing platforms, sustainable pensions and green banking to carbon tracking & offsetting, climate intelligence & climate risk analytics and ESG data providers.

  • Closing the gender gap in finance: startups helping women access and feel more confident about financial services, from banking to investing, credit and education.

  • Blockchain and crypto for climate: blockchain and crypto startups helping to fight climate change and bridge the gap between our financial system and nature, from climate DAOs to nature tokenization and blockchain for carbon credit traceability.

Payments

  • Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL): startups and companies which offer this new payment method for consumers, and businesses, allowing them to pay for the purchase in instalments without charging interest.
    A tag “BNPL” also exists, which tracks only the players mainly focused on providing these solutions and can be used to compute stats such as funding received.
    A deep dive into BNPL is also available on the Dealroom blog.

  • Payment orchestration: payment Orchestration focuses on abstracting the complexity of managing and integrating with multiple PSPs and VAS. This is done by focusing on smart routing to improve transaction success and sales conversion, instead of focusing on processing or collecting.
    A tag “payment orchestration” also exists to track the startups.
    A deep dive into payment orchestration is also available on the Dealroom blog.

  • Alternative payments in Europe: alternative payments such as digital wallets, account-to-account (A2A) payments with open banking and BNPL are becoming some of the preferred payment methods for consumers. Furthermore, crypto, stablecoins and CBDCs are coming to the game.
    A deep dive into alternative payments is also available on the Dealroom blog.

Banking

  • Global challenger banks: fintech startups offering digital banking services in competition with traditional banks. A tag “challenger bank” also exists.

  • Open Banking: open banking startups allow third-party financial service providers open access to consumer banking, transactions, and other financial data. Several use cases arise from this, such as A2A payments, credit scoring, financial planning, etc. A tag open banking also exists.

  • Financial education for kids & teens: startups working to improve the financial knowledge of kids and teens.

Crypto and Defi

For more details visit the Crypto, web 3, metaverse and blockchain page.


Wealth Management

  • Stock trading platforms: fintech startups offering trading platforms for retail investors to trade stocks and ETFs with low/no fees. A tag “neo brokers trading” also exists.

  • Democratizing venture capital: startups allowing retail and accredited investors to access private market investment opportunities such as startups, with approaches ranging from selections of VC funds to crowdfunding, pre-IPO investing and secondaries and blockchain digital securities. A tag “investing in startups” also exists. The topic is more broadly part of the “alternative investments” sector.

Mortgages & Lending

  • Revenue-based financing: startups providing revenue-based financing as an alternative to traditional debt or equity financing. A tag “revenue based financing” also exists. A deep dive into Revenue-based financing is also available on the Dealroom blog.

  • Embedded lending: Embedded lending allows any company to access a vast and secure infrastructure for lending, and immediately start financing its customers. A tag “embedded lending” also exists. A deep dive into embedded lending is also available on the Dealroom blog.

  • Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL): startups and companies which offer this new payment method for consumers, and businesses, allowing them to pay for the purchase in instalments without charging interest.
    A tag “BNPL” also exists, which tracks only the players mainly focused on providing these solutions and can be used to compute stats such as funding received.
    A deep dive into BNPL is also available on the Dealroom blog.

Insurance
Curated content for insurtech can be more widely accessed through the dedicated insurtech platform.

Financial Management Solutions

  • Corporate expense management: startups reinventing expense management processes for companies, bringing them from mostly manual to digital-first. A key segment is digital-first corporate card startups such as Brex, Ramp, Pleo, Jeeves and many others.
    The tag “spend management”, tracks more generally fintech startups focus on the management of companies spending. A deep dive into the topic is also available on the Dealroom blog.

  • On-demand pay: startups are offering on-demand pay, flexible earned wage access (FEWA) and salary on-demand. On-demand pay for workers provides an alternative to payday lending, overdrafts, and credit cards, which all carry higher fees – and it could be a solution to combat financial stressors on employees.
    A tag “on demand pay” also exists, which tracks only the players mainly focused on providing these solutions and can be used to compute stats such as funding received.

Regtech

  • AML (anti money laundering): startups providing tech-first solutions for banks and fintechs to comply with financial regulation on anti-money laundering regulation.
    A tag “anti money laundering” also exists to track all the players in the sector.

Tags 

Tags are used to track cross-sub industry themes or more specific trends inside sub-industries.
Here is an overview of the main manually curated and maintained tags for fintech in Dealroom. 


Impact & sustainability:
In addition to the previous section, impact & sustainability can be tracked using tags such as: “sustainable development goals”, “climate tech” and “green finance”. 

Payments

  • BNPL: described in the previous section.

  • Payment orchestration: described in the previous section.

  • Open banking: this tag is applied to track startups offering open banking services in general. Many of these players offer account-to-account (A2A) payments. 

Banking

  • Challenger bank: described in the previous section.

  • Open banking: described in the previous section.

  • Core banking: startups providing financial institutions and fintech with core banking software, which is the back-end system that processes daily banking transactions and posts updates to accounts and other financial records. Core banking systems typically include deposit, loan and credit processing capabilities, with interfaces to general ledger systems and reporting tools.

  • BaaS: BaaS or banking-as-a-service refers to companies providing 

Crypto and Defi
For more details visit the Crypto, web 3, metaverse and blockchain page.

Wealth Management

  • neo brokers trading: described in the previous section.

  • robo advisory: robo-advisors solutions to make automated portfolio management accessible, affordable, and convenient.

  • alternative investments: startups allowing investments into asset classes alternative to public stocks and bonds, such as real estate, private markets, but also assets such as blue-chip art, etc. A key segment is investments in private market companies tracked by investing in startups.

  • Pension & savings: startups helping consumers save for long term/pension or providing tech solutions to financial advisors, pension managers etc to provide improved savings options for their customers. 

Mortgages & Lending

  • Consumer lending: non-bank lenders providing digital-first lending to consumers.

  • Business lending: non-bank lenders providing digital-first lending to businesses.

  • Revenue based financing: described in the previous section.

  • Embedded lending: described in the previous section.

  • BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later): described in the previous section.

  • Trade and supply chain finance: startups providing lending to finance costs and improve business efficiency for buyers and sellers linked in a sales transaction.

  • Mortgage: Startups focusing on providing mortgages to consumers (and businesses).

  • P2P lending: startups providing lending to businesses and consumers by connecting lenders with borrowers on online platforms.

  • Credit scoring: startups assessing the creditworthiness of consumers or businesses to empower lending processes.

Insurance
For more details visit the insurtech page.

Financial Management Solutions

RegTech

  • anti money laundering: described in the previous section.

  • kyc: companies providing know-your-customer (KYC) solutions to business with a focus on financial compliance (e.g onboarding, transaction monitoring). The tag is also used more broadly for kyc outside finance.

Cross-sector trends

  • Embedded finance: embedded finance brings financial services where and when the customers need them. So financial services are not offered anymore as standalone products, but instead, more personalized solutions are being offered to customers by non-financial partners in context.
    Have a look at our report “The rise of Embedded Finance”.

  • Embedded insurance: described in the previous section.

  • Embedded lending: described in the previous section.