5 Startups to Watch: Ledger, Speedinvest, Emma, and More
EXCLUSIVE – Fintech is constantly expanding its reach in the world, adding new customers, new services, and new startups every day. That’s why keeping up with new companies making their mark in financial services can be so exciting, and why Bank Innovation has a watchlist designed to do just that.
On that note, here are five startups across the globe to keep an eye on this month.
France, while not quite as flush with neobanks as merry England, has been chartering a steady course in fintech for years now, with banks like BNP Paribas starting innovation efforts and with startups like Ledger tackling buzzing new areas like crypto.
A company that creates hardware wallets for the protection of cryptocurrency, Ledger is focused on tightening crypto security–and not a moment too soon, thanks to the numerous (and large) cryptocurrency hacks worldwide.
The company has just received a new round of funding, and plans to put the capital to use beefing up its features and platform.
While not technically in fintech, funding remains an integral part of financial innovation, and Speedinvest wants to fill that role. As a European “micro” venture capital fund, the company is targeting early-stage, marketplace startups with its new fund.
The company, which is looking to close a fund of about $31 million, will use the money to make seed and pre-seed investments–”sector agnostic” investments, according to the company–and will focus on those marketplace startups whose businesses could benefit from a “platform approach,” the company told TechCrunch.
The United Kingdom seems to have a proclivity for neobanks and new financial services, but even in that saturated market, new service Emma has been making a name for itself.
In the short span of a few months, the money management app has managed to gain permission from U.K. regulator FCA to operate under the country’s PSD2 mandate, an open banking regulation designed to make banking more transparent.
This is a key step towards becoming a full-fledged bank, which is integral towards Emma’s goal of being the only banking app on a user’s phone, as Bank Innovation has previously reported.
Meanwhile, the fintech has also expanded its role in the U.K. financial ecosystem, through partnerships with older, more established neobanks like Monzo, which Emma integrated with just this past January.
Real estate investment is a growing area of interest for financial services, with companies such as Unison developing new, modern ways to open that door to investors. Startups like Juniper Square is another such company, operating an investment platform that better allows users to track outside capital for new projects.
The company, which developed its real estate platform in 2014, currently has about 50,000 investors using the service, managing nearly $200 billion-worth of investments. The startup also recently raised $6 million in a round of funding, which it will use to further develop its platform and expand its team.
While there are hundreds of fintechs out there seeking to bring older financial concepts into the digital mainstream, it’s rarer to find fintechs that are succeeding–not least because picking up fintech funding is growing harder and harder.
This isn’t a problem for Drop, a Toronto-based startup seeking to build a rewards platform for millennial users. Rewards have remained a popular area for fintechs, but only a select few of them have received the necessary capital to actually build out their platforms. Drop, which recently raised $21 million in a Series A, is one of them.
The app operates by reading a user’s credit card transaction data (via API), before rewarding users with points and incentives for making purchases with services that have partnered on Drop’s platform.
At the moment, these brands include Costco, Starbucks, and Instacart, among others.
For more startups, take a look at Bank Innovation’s Watchlist.
To learn more about fintech startups and entrepreneurs, join us on March 5-6, 2018 at the Parc 55 in San Francisco for Bank Innovation 2018. Click here to register.
