It's always interesting to see which companies cut through the clutter and make it to the
unicorn club, with valuations exceeding $1B.
has published an updated list of all the privately held unicorns for 2017, and amongst the 196 names, 21 (or 11%) fell within the financial technology category. The number is interesting, only because in August 2016, Business Insider published its own piece claiming there were . So clearly, there are different methods (and criterion) for devising these lists.Not surprisingly, most are consumer-facing, though some are B2B, and the largest number were in the US (11), followed by China (4) and the UK (2). The following countries each had one firm listed: India, Switzerland, Sweden, & Amsterdam. Interestingly, behemoth economies Germany and Japan had no fintech unicorns on the list. Within the fintech category, China's Lu.com had the highest valuation - at $18.5B, followed by Stripe - with a valuation of $9.2B.
Of the 21 fintechs, 4 have received over $1B in disclosed funding to date - Avant ($1.7B), Kabbage ($1.5B), Lu.com ($1.7B) & SoFi ($1.6B). The "most efficient", requiring the least amount of capital to achieve unicorn status were Robinhood ($176M) and Transferwise ($116.3M).
We have links to several of the unicorns listed below, and we also published with four fintechs (3 on this list) that look to be ripe for IPOs in 2017. Interestingly, Alibaba's Ant Financial/ Alipay did not make this list, but perhaps that is because the parent company is public, and Ant Financial is a subsidiary, though it is rumored they will spin off under a separate IPO in the near future.The list below also contains links to stories we've published on these firms previously on FintekNews.
- 51Xinyongka (China) Credit Card/Financial Services App - $459M Disclosed Funding
- Adyen (Amsterdam) Payment Services - $266M Disclosed Funding
- Avant (US) Financial Services/ Lending - $1.7B Disclosed Funding
- Avaloq (Switzerland) Core & Digital Banking Software - $300M Disclosed Funding
- Credit Karma (US) Personal Finance - $368.5M Disclosed Funding
- Funding Circle (UK) Marketplace Business Lender - $373M Disclosed Funding
- GreenSky (US) Credit to Businesses Customers - $410M Disclosed Funding
- Gusto (US) Payroll/ Benefits - $161.12M Disclosed Funding
- Kabbage (US) Financial Services/ Lending - $1.5B Disclosed Funding
- Klarna (Sweden) E-commerce Payment Solutions $324.47M Disclosed Funding
- Lakala (China) Payments/ Financial Services - $242M Disclosed Funding
- Lu.com (China) Online Marketplace for Trading Financial Assets - $1.7B Disclosed Funding
- Mozido (US) Digital Commerce & Payments - $313.71M Disclosed Funding
- One97 Communications (India) Digital Goods Marketplace & Mobile Marketing - $1.4B Disclosed Funding
- Prosper (US) Marketplace Lender - $354.94M Disclosed Funding
- Robinhood (US) Stock Brokerage - $176M in Disclosed Funding
- Rong360 (China) Custom Financing & Loans - $258M in Disclosed Funding
- SoFi (US) Lending & Wealth Management - $1.6B Disclosed Funding
- Stripe (US) Online Payments for Businesses - $690M in Disclosed Funding
- Transferwise (UK) Payments & Financial Services - $116.3M in Disclosed Funding
- Zenefits (US) Digital HR Platform - $583.62M in Disclosed Funding