The FinTech50 2019 - Top Five

1 Onfido - London

It was unanimous.

Following a selection process that involved five panel discussions and a ballot of 35 industry experts, Onfido emerged as this year’s top ranked #Fintech from a longlist of 2000 plus.

For Onfido, it is further recognition in a year which has seen it placed second (Fintech) in Deloitte’s Fast-Track 50 (overall 7th), and listed on The Sunday Times Tech Track 100.

The RegTech now has 1500 customers worldwide including Monzo and Revolut, placed at 2 and 3 respectively on this year’s 50. It achieved 342%

sales growth in 2018; secured investment from SBI, Salesforce Ventures and Augmentum. And In January, Onfido launched in Paris (its sixth office worldwide) securing clients Europcar and AR24, and partnering with IDEMIA, the global leader in Augmented Identity.

So far, so fast growth.

Significantly, Onfido is also establishing a global industry standard in a market that McKinsey has predicted to hit $20 billion by 2022.

“We’re firing on all cylinders - innovation, winning business, bringing aboard exceptional talent, expanding globally, and gaining recognition and accolades,” said Kassai, who co-founded Onfido in 2012 with Eamon Jubbawy and Ruhul Amin.

“We’re helping to re-establish trust and increase access to services by offering secure and remote identity verification. Our mission is to create an open world where identity is the key to access, and we’re engaged in an ecosystem that is working toward a new, decentralized, consumerempowering portable identity that will help us get to a world free of fraud, with access for all.”

2. Monzo - London

One in 20 people in the UK now use Monzo and the digital bank claims to be onboarding 55,000 new customers each week.

Like most challengers, Monzo has transformed significantly since it famously crowd-funded £1M in 96 seconds (in 2016). By late 2018, it had topped a consumer survey by Which? emerging as best British bank for customer service. In March 2019 it was named best banking app at the British Banking Awards, and in June announced plans to launch into the US.

As adoption shifts beyond the early fanbase, Monzo, like its competitors, continues to innovate and ‘delight’ customers, offering current, joint and business accounts, alongside overdrafts and loans up to £15,000. It partners with TransferWise for international payments and OakNorth to offer savings. Monzo also claims to be 4x better than other UK banks at stopping card fraud, and 3x better at stopping identity theft. emerging.

But something more powerful is also emerging. 140,000 customers have used Monzo’s block on gambling spending, and in September the digital bank announced a wider merchant block. Put your salary into Monzo, and they will advance you the cash one day early.

For the past two years Monzo has shared a full annual report with its customers. This year, CEO Tom Blomfield outlined Monzo’s progress, as well as its ambition to generate sustainable profits and remove barriers to banking. Beneath the hot coral veneer, transparent, socially responsible Monzo is actively hard-wiring values as well as innovation into its brand.

3. Revolut - London

Nikolay Storonsky, Revolut and Evgeny Likhoded, ClauseMatch

Revolut’s rise has been meteoric since its early (2015) iteration as a pre-paid card + app that let users spend money abroad without paying high foreign exchange fees.

Four years on, Revolut reports 7 million customers, and has introduced a range of features which allow users to exchange cryptocurrencies (with other Revolut users), open business accounts and trade stocks. Its global ambition is supported by significant investment and high profile partnerships.

A new partnership deal with Visa, announced late September 2019, will see Revolut grow to 5000 people and expand into 24 new markets, including the US, giving it a presence in 56 markets around the world.

In January 2019, Revolut partnered with leading London RegTech ClauseMatch to streamline management of internal policies, controls and regulatory compliance. ClauseMatch Co-founder / CEO Evgeny Likhoded said, “They have just announced reaching 7 million customers, which is an impressive accomplishment in such a limited period of time and ClauseMatch has been the number 1 business customer of Revolut’s Business Banking.

“We are excited to partner with them, pioneering our regulatory technology to help Revolut automate certain aspects of their compliance and get to market faster where licenses are required.”

In October 2019, Revolut reported an almost 5x growth in its revenue at £58.2 million in 2018.

4. Raisin - Berlin

Raisin has accumulated €16Bn in deposits since 2013, delivering more than €115M in interest to over 200,000 savers across 31 European countries.

The pan-European deposits marketplace, which this year acquired a bank, now works with more than 80 partner banks across Europe, including the UK. In October, Raisin announced its launch in Ireland, promising to triple interest rates on deposits for Irish savers.

The deposits marketplace has also struck partnerships with digital banks Monese, N26 and Starling, providing their customers with access to over 500 savings products.

An earlier cross-border relationship, forged in 2016, with Paris-based Younited Credit has enabled the French company to develop and extend its savings offer in Europe.

Co-founder & COO at Younited Credit, Geoffroy Guigou, says, “Raisin took over our term deposits day to day operations and offered us all the tools to efficiently manage our offers in France, Spain, Germany and Austria. This allows us to easily adjust our funding strategy as often as needed and optimize our cost of funding – a key challenge for a bank. “The benefit of this partnership is not limited to the operations and features offered by Raisin platform, but also includes the benefit of Raisin’s expertise on marketing and distribution of our saving offers, which lead us to conclude exclusive distribution partnerships with prestigious financial institutions.

“Raisin is unquestionably a “turnkey” solution that perfectly illustrates the Open Banking trend, a true inspiration for Younited when it come to the launch of our own partnership offer (Creditas-a-Service solutions, which now account for almost 20% of our activity) related to financing services.”

5. Tink - Stockholm

Sweden’s open banking pioneer Tink launched its cloud-based platform in five new markets this year. Originally a consumer-facing app, Tink now provides its four “pillars of technology” - Account Aggregation, Payment Initiation, Personal Finance Management and “Data Enrichment”- to banks and other financial service providers, allowing them to roll out standalone apps or add their own in-house .

In May 2019, Tink partnered with NatWest to integrate their Personal Finance Management and “Data Enrichment” products into the British bank’s core mobile banking app. And in June, Tink announced payments giant PayPal as a strategic investor.

Banking clients include Nordea, SEB and ABN AMRO. Tink also works with Fintechs, including Klarna.

When Danish challenger bank LunarWay considered whether to build or buy, they estimated that it would require the work of one full-time employee just to build connections to the new APIs banks are required to roll out as part of the EU’s PSD2 legislation. And that would only offer access to current accounts

According to Lunar Way’s COO, Morten Sønderskov, “Tink has an interesting Nordic perspective that matches Lunar Way’s ambitions. Besides the coverage and connectivity, Tink has a well-developed API structure that makes the integration and collaboration seamless.

“They’ve already proven that they can collaborate with a range of different players within the financial services industry, which underlines their ability to close the gap between banks and new financial players,” he said.