Finance Monthly December 2019 Edition

Founded by Bulgarian entrepreneur Vladimir Tenev and American entrepreneur Baiju Bhatt, Robnhood is a commission-free investing platform. The company is currently valued at $7.6 billion after closing its most recent, late-stage funding round in July 2019 when Robinhood raised $323 million. With its over 6 million customers in the US and a planned expansion into the UK in early 2020, the company and its billionaire co-founders won’t be stopping anytime soon. London-based Greensill specialises in supply chain finance, where businesses raise funding backed by supplier payments, with serious establishment backing. Founded in 2011 by Lex Greensill who used to be a Director at Morgan Stanley and Citibank, the company raised a round of $800 million in May 2019 from SoftBank’s Vision Fund which valued the company at $3.5 billion. Five months later, in October, it raised another $655 million in new funding from the same fund, bringing its total capital raised to $1.7 billion. Headquartered in Berlin, N26 is one of Europe’s most prominent digital banks which target millennials. Labelling itself as ‘not your grandad’s bank’, the challenger is investing a lot in marketing campaigns and does not see profitability as a “core metric”. Earlier this year, the bank raised a further $170 million from existing investors at a valuation of $3.5 billion (increasing its market worth by $800 million from the last raise). With its 3.5 million customers in Europe, the neobank has big plans for 2020 and plans to expand into the US market in the near future. 2019 has been a good year for Berlin-based FinTech Raisin – it raised €25 million from Goldman Sachs in August on top of a €100 million Series D round three months before. It now has 84 partner banks from 24 countries and eight platforms which cover all of Europe. Founded in 2012 by Dr Tamaz Georgadze (CEO), Dr Frank Freund (CFO) and Michael Stephan (COO), the company offers an open banking platform for online savings and investments for customers across Europe, claiming that it has delivered more than €115 million in interest to its 200,000 savers across Europe. With its US platform launching in 2020 and plans to buy potential businesses in the retirement market, it looks like Raisin is set for another exciting year. With its offices in Stockholm, London, New York and Berlin, Klarna is on its way to become one of the world’s top FinTech companies. In 2019, the startup that makes shopping easier launched a new $460 million fundraising round, which resulted in a post-money valuation of $5.5 billion and made it the highest-valued private FinTech company in Europe. The company has recently faced some criticism because the ‘pay later with Klarna’ button is used too much by young people who then end up in debt, so there are definitely some things that the Swedish FinTech needs to work on in the future when it comes to its image. However, with its more than a million transactions a day between 170,000 merchants in 17 core markets, Klarna is definitely one to watch! 12 www.finance-monthly.com FRONT COVER FEATURE - 20 FINTECHS TO WATCH IN 2020