Miami, Florida

Miami may just be the paradise the fintech industry has been waiting for. A vibrant banking and financial services scene, along with a gateway connection to Latin America, makes Miami (and South Florida in general) a natural place for new fintechs to grow.

Fintechs doing business here include PsychSignal, a social data and sentiment analysis API and platform, NovoPayment, a payment provider focused on Latin America, Waleteros, a mobile banking app foor the underbanked, and YellowPepper, a digital finance provider.

Venture Hive, a downtown Miami-based entrepreneurship education company, runs a technology startup accelerator that focuses on industries tied most closely with South Florida’s economy. Due to popular demand, fintech was added in 2014. Many of Venture Hive’s fintech companies are focused on the unbanked, remittances and other financial solutions.

Miami Beach is also host to the Fintech Americas Conference, which is marketed as the Latin Americas and the Caribbean banking industry’s premier event for C-Suite leaders.

Sunny weather and the proximity to sandy beaches probably doesn’t hurt its case either.

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is second to only Silicon Valley as a tech hotspot – Amazon and Microsoft both call the region home – but it continues to grow in fintech. The largest mobile payments company in the U.S. is a Seattle native – 40% of all mobile purchases at the point of sale come through the Starbucks app.

But the area is also attracting a growing number of startups, despite soaring real estate prices. There’s the remittance powerhouse Remitly, with some $200 million in funding; the revenue-based growth capital firm Lighter Capital; the personal financial management service Money Clouds; the family financial planning service Tomorrow; the top-of-wallet card promotion service Switchme.com, and newcomer Stakana Analytics, a customer retention and analytics platform that is a member of this site’s sister accelerator, INV Fintech.

And let’s not forget the drama-filled credit card processor Gravity Payments, whose CEO guaranteed employees a $70K salary to tremendous media acclaim, but which also has a lot of weirdness going on.

Bank Innovation will host the first of its two annual conferences, Bank Innovation Ignite, in this city in March of 2019.

Toronto, Canada 

The fintech industry is making inroads all across the globe, but Toronto is starting to stand out as a major hub of activity. This Ontario city is home to three of the world’s top 25 banks, as well as a highly educated tech workforce. Toronto Life Magazine recently dubbed the city “The New Silicon Valley,” though it has some competition there. But with startups like Wave, Shopify, and Wealthsimple doing business here, why not?

A recent study by CBRE Group showed that Toronto created more tech jobs than the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., combined in 2017. Recent tech announcements include Microsoft’s plans to invest $570 million in Toronto and create 500 new full-time jobs, and Uber’s plans to launch a new engineering hub in the city, investing $200 million. Intel, Pinterest, Instacart and WeWork all announced new Toronto offices as well.

Canadian financial institutions have not only found it useful to collaborate with fintech firms, but also to invest in accelerators in order to gain access to top talent. Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone (DMZ), for example, is partnered with Bank of Montreal (BMO), TD Bank, General Motors and the City of Toronto on the DMZ-BMO Fintech Accelerator. The initiative offers mentorships, piloting, connections, workshops, cash prizes and workspace for the next generation of fintechs.

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