Top FinTech Startups & Scaleups of London to Watch Out in 2023
In the era of technology, information technologies and modern fintech apps dominate our world, plus our wallets. Presenting a rich context of investment management and financial innovations, FinTech startups and scaleups are in their highest demand. FinTech companies and ventures provide software services, and currently, a lot of them are nearly considered equivalent to banks, and in some ways, they are better.
Before we start, make sure to register for the Startups of London talent-network if you are interested in finding startup jobs in London. We are in contact with startups who are hiring, and can get you introductions with founders.
Defining FinTech Startups and Scale-ups
To briefly define, a FinTech startup refers mainly to technology and innovation, aiming to compete with the old-school financial methods and services. In the previous years, the handicap of the market confronted reliability and trust, however, now it is becoming no such trouble with the years, and successful samples came by. Nevertheless, subscription offers and third parties are still the most effective ways to make the most of the money to make and use them more efficiently.
Tech scaleups are one step taller than the startup phase. “A scaleup (company) is a company who has an average annualized return of at least 20% in the past 3 years with at least 10 employees at the beginning of the period,” according to OECD. However, it seems impressive; the more a company scales, the more it values.
As a small business or startup owner, keep in mind to invest in a LLC filing company to protect yourself and your stakeholders from liabilities in the future.
FinTech Startups List
Papaya Global
- Founded: 2016
- Funds Raised: $250M
- Employee Number: 501-1000
Papaya Global is a fintech company with a London office. Their primary focus is on providing global enterprises with advanced payroll technology, complemented by an embedded payments platform. Their flagship product, Papaya Payroll OS, offers comprehensive features such as automation, compliance, flexibility, and robust security. In an era of remote work and expanding global operations, Papaya Global’s services are proving invaluable. With operations spanning 160+ countries, they provide a fully automated global payroll and workforce management solution and can onboard customers in less than three months, allowing companies to establish a payroll operation while ensuring local compliance in a new country of operation.
Revolut
- Founded: 2015
- Funds Raised: £1.3b
- Employee Number: 1000-5000
Established in 2015, Londoner fintech company Revolut reaches more than 2,100 employees as of December 2020. The FinTech company is offering a range of digital banking services. They targeted their audience as tech-savvy mobile app users, including transferring money abroad in 29 different currencies with a prepaid debit card that enables cash machine withdrawals in 120 countries.
Revolut offers more vaults for saving money and make a budget and overseas medical insurance. Users choose a free UK current account for the standard accounts and a free euro IBAN account in general. There are no extra fees for exchanging in +30 currencies, up to £5,000 a month, and the members can withdraw up to £200 a month from cash machines.
Monzo
- Founded: 2015
- Funds Raised: £843m
- Employee Number: 1000-2000
Monzo, one of the inspiring FinTech startups in London, operates a digital-only bank offering unique solutions and features to fulfil their clients’ needs. With a mission to build the best bank account globally, the growing up fintech app currently has more than 5 million users, and it has been counting since it was founded in 2015.
Monzo makes a difference in the banking sector by focusing on people’s actual challenges rather than aiming to sell their products. In fact, they let their users take control of their finances.
Monzo investors include Passion Capital, Thrive Capital, Goodwater Capital, Accel, and General Catalyst.
“When it comes to consumer apps, banks are at least a decade behind the ease and feature-set of a Lyft or an Airbnb, not to mention sloth-like and unimaginative when compared to the innovation cycle in the apps we use every day. With Monzo, we aim to make money work for everyone by working with our community of users to build things that work for them.” Tom Blomfield, the CEO of Monzo.
Wise
- Founded: 2010
- Funds Raised:£996m
- Employee Number: 1000-2000
An online money transfer service, Wise (formerly Transferwise), lets you transfer money up to eight times cheaper than a bank. Moreover, the system is beautifully simple. It skips expensive international payments entirely by applying for two local transfers instead of one international operation.
Ebury
- Founded: 2009
- Funds Raised: £570m
- Employee Number: 1001-5000
Ebury is a fintech company that specialised in international payments, collections, and foreign exchange services. It offers financial solutions aimed mainly at SMEs and midcaps. Ebury offers foreign exchange activity in over 130 currencies – for both major and emerging markets – as well as cash management strategies, trade finance, and foreign exchange risk management.
Established in London in 2009 by Spanish engineers Juan Lobato and Salvador García, the company has grown its global market presence to 31 offices in 21 countries and more than 1,300 employees.
PaymentSense
- Founded: 2010
- Funds Raised: £329m
- Employee Number: 1000-2000
Started in 2010, PaymentSense was launched by young entrepreneurs who realised that SMEs needed a way to overcome machine fees and expensive services of merchants. PaymentSense today provides affordable merchant services to over 70,000 small and medium businesses in the UK and processes over £10B worth of credit card annual payments.
Rapyd
- Founded: 2016
- Funds Raised: £770m
- Employee Number: 600
Rapyd is a payments platform that inserts fintech services into any app, making it easier for users to access local payment methods.
Since its founding, Rapyd has grown significantly and become one of the largest local payment networks. Rapyd offers 900+ payment methods in 100 countries, allowing its users to open new markets, reach new customers, and create new opportunities anywhere.
TradingView
- Founded: 2011
- Funds Raised: $298M
- Employee Number: 800
TradingView is one of the largest social networks and charting platforms for traders and investors. It has over 30 million users base each month across 180 various countries. They are backed by some of the top American venture capital firms.
They have open source charts and commercial libraries that are used by tens of thousands of financial sites like CME, Refinitiv, Investopedia, Crunchbase, Binance, and Bitcoin.com.
Starling Bank
- Founded: 2014
- Funds Raised: £706m
- Employee Number: 500-1000
Creating a different approach to old-fashioned banking, Starling Bank is one of the top leveling up fintech companies providing everything you want from a full-service bank account in the UK. Founded in 2014, Starling Bank serves rational banking solutions such as freezing your card, disabling or restricting payments, settling up, categorizing spending behaviours, providing international money transfers and more. So far, the number of customer accounts are over 2.5 million.
Nutmeg
- Founded: 2011
- Funds Raised: £117.7m
- Employee Number: 100-500
Nutmeg UK serves residents with algorithmic and human financial services for multiple account types, including Lifetime Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs), which are eligible for a 25% government bonus, regular ISAs that are tax-free up to £20,000 per year, and employer-matched Personal Pensions. A Junior TSA account was added early in 2020. Nutmeg switched from fully automated to a hybrid financial advisory in 2018, with higher investment tiers managed by human investment teams.
Soldo
We visited Soldo and had an inspiring interview with Carlo Gualandri, the Founder and the CEO of the FinTech company in the UK. We learned more about their funding history, the challenges they faced, the solutions they found during their success journey, and many other aspects of their business.
- Founded: 2014
- Funds Raised: £201.7m
- Employee Number: 200-500
A multi-user expense account, Soldo helps companies manage their spendings. Soldo integrates prepaid Mastercard cards, a web-based administration console and a mobile app into one intuitive future-ready platform.
The venture was founded by tech veterans and payment pioneers who refused to accept the inefficient and fragmented state of business spending in the 21st century. With decades of experience in payment services and transactional system development, the team didn’t just slap a brand on an ‘easy’ solution or quick-fix. Instead, they invested heavily in creating a world-class technological, regulatory, and operational platform from scratch.
Soldo’s rock-solid innovation and talented team have attracted over $80M in Seed, Series A and Series B funding. Our investors include Accel Partners, Dawn Capital, Battery Ventures, Connect Ventures, InReach Ventures, U-Start, and R204 Partners.
Yoyo
- Founded: 2013
- Funds Raised: £46.2m
- Employee Number: 50-100
Introducing a combined mobile payment and personalised loyalty app to its customers, Yoyo collaborates with French patisserie PAUL UK to exemplify and explain Europe’s fastest-growing digital payments. For the loyalty and marketing solution, build and launch its first mobile payment and personalised loyalty app, which will be exclusively available to UK customers from 20 May 2019.
The fully-branded PAUL UK app, which is a download free app from Apple Store and Google Play, makes payments with a rewarding experience, provides customers with a secure, straight-through mobile payment, automated PAUL loyalty accumulation, instant PAUL rewards redemption and voucher sharing and to be a just-in-case, digital receipt collection.
WeGift.io
We had an interview with Adam Hobbs, the Vice President of the Global Supply of WeGift and discussed the success story of WeGift, the challenges they overcame and their future goals.
- Founded: 2014
- Funds Raised: £15.3m
- Employee Number: 50-100
A UK fintech startup, WeGift, has developed a platform allowing businesses to gain digital rewards to customers efficiently. Aron Alexander founded the FinTech company in 2014, who was surprised to receive a £5 physical voucher refund in the post. Alexander realized that businesses were unsuccessful because of using far more convenient digital rewards and incentives that can be handled online. According to Incentive and Motivation, TechRound says that the corporate rewards and incentives industry will be worth almost $700B by 2024.
11:FS
- Founded: 2016
- Funds Raised: £3.9m
- Employee Number: 100-500
Founded in 2016, 11:FS aka 11:FS Foundry is a UK based digital modular banking platform that creates digital services for banks. DNB took a 5% stake for $3M in October 2018 and increased it in June 2019.
11:FS Foundry brings adopts, personalized services and experiences to promote faster methods and at significantly less cost, rather than the traditional ones. The cloud-based technology and a modular approach are used, allowing customers to apply an entire banking stack or choose services, depending on new strategies.
Coconut
- Founded: 2016
- Funds Raised: £8.3m
- Employee Number: 11-50
Founded in 2016, London based FinTech startup Coconut presents a smart accounting tool for self-employed people. The tool offers a simple, easy-to-use app with expenses, invoicing, and tax all in one.
The company’s mission is to make people’s lives easier by combining banking and accounting services into one simple product.
Creditspring
- Founded: 2016
- Funds Raised: £74.58m
- Employee Number: 51-200
Unlike the traditional interest-based loans, Creditspring offers subscription-based loans to its customers allowing them the opportunity to secure funds for unexpected opportunities and to improve their credit history and score. Instead of paying interest on money borrowed, customers pay fixed monthly membership fees.
Creditspring also allows its customers to track their creditworthiness and financial stability by giving monthly updates.
Curve
- Founded: 2015
- Funds Raised: £139.9m
- Employee Number: 250-500
Founded in 2015, Curve has breathed new life into the online banking scene. It offers unique features like going back in time to transfer payments from one card to another, activating backup cards if your payment is declined, and even making travelling so much easier with great exchange rates and cashback.
Using the accompanying mobile app, the Curve card can assemble multiple payment cards and allow users to pay and withdraw with just one card. You can simply start using Curve by downloading the app and adding your credit and debit cards to your digital Curve Wallet. As of 2022, there are more than 2 million users and £1.5 billion processed payments.
Treecard
- Founded: 2020
- Funds Raised: £4.7m
- Employee Number: 1-10
Treecard is a wooden Mastercard that restores the earth’s forests as you spend. The debit card is made from sustainably sourced cherry wood and recycled plastic bottles. Treecard is powered by Ecosia, a search engine that redirects its ad income into reforesting the planet.
They fund +20 tree-planting projects in 15 countries, focusing on deforested areas. Treecard users don’t pay extra fees to support this project. On the contrary, the money to support the projects comes from the businesses that process your purchase through an interchange fee. As of 2022, they have helped plant 120 million trees.
Toucan
- Founded: 2021
- Funds Raised: £800k
- Employee Number: 1-10
Toucan is an app that creates a new and simple way of giving. It allows people to easily set up monthly donations to charity.
Toucan brings together technology and social impact. Matt Crate, CEO of Toucan, says their aim is “[t]o create an app that helps charities and provides people with a way to give that matches up with the way we live now.” It keeps donations under one roof and allows the user to choose from thousands of charities.
Tulipshare
- Founded: 2020
- Funds Raised: £9m
- Employee Number: 10-50
Tulipshare is an investing platform that encourages retail investors to invest in ways that incentivise social and ethical change. There is nothing new about activist investing, but Tulipshare offers an opportunity to make a real impact. Rather than seeing investing as a passive activity, Tulipshare allows users to align their investments with their views.
Normally, a shareholder can have a say in their company’s operations. However, this requires an immense capital investment. By aggregating shares, Tulipshare allows shareholders to have a voice that can bring about change.
Gro
- Founded: 2020
- Funds Raised: £5.4m
- Employee Number: 10-50
Gro combines decentralization and traditional finance to make it easy for everyone to create and share wealth. It develops amazing DeFi protocols and products. Through its tranching mechanism, Gro Protocol provides leverage, protects savings, and manages risk.
There are a variety of products available that depend on your particular yield and risk profile: Vault and PWRD. Risk takers can get more leveraged returns by using Vault. Or you can use PWRD to get protected savings and yield.
Zilch
- Founded: 2018
- Funds Raised: £260m
- Employee Number: 100-250
Zilch is a virtual Mastercard. So, it is both safe and secure. Zilch app allows its users to buy now, pay later. It gathers all your accounts together into one place which helps you keep track of your payments. Moreover, you can shop with thousands of brands without additional charges or you can Zilch Anywhere for a small fee. You only need to pay %25 upfront and the rest of the payment is divided into 6 weeks. You can set alarms or even snooze your payments which gives you four extra days.
Tembo Money
- Founded: 2020
- Funds Raised: £2.6m
- Employee Number: 10-50
Founded in 2020, Tembo is UK’s leading family-focused mortgage broker. They endavour to help prospective home buyers achieve their dreams sooner either. They increase your deposit or boost your income with the help of your family.
Tembo is revolutionizing lending with its expert advising team. It helps prospective buyers to up the amount of money they can borrow with Income Boost or Family Help to Buy Scheme. Their other services include standard mortgage and mortgage protection.
Upside Saving
- Founded: 2020
- Funds Raised: £1.5m
- Employee Number: 1-10
Upside’s goal is to make saving absolutely effortless. Being a FinTech platform itself, Upside allows other FinTechs and apps to provide cashback services as an API. It utilises Open Banking and machine learning which allows platforms to present personalised cashback offers to their relevant customers.
Since spend data is particularly predictive, Upside is able to provide API clients with useful insights. Overall, they create a better customer experience as well as ensure higher sales for businesses. With Upside, users can save up to £1250 a year.
Plend
- Founded: 2020
- Funds Raised: £2.6m
- Employee Number: 10-50
Plend is an upgraded consumer lending platform that denies the harsh limitations traditional lenders put on people. Looking beyond the credit score Plend aims to enable people to access affordable credit rates based on a fairer financial assesment.
Plend offers borrowing up to £10,000 at 10% to 25% APR with a quick application and no hidden costs and fees. Their team cares for their customers’ financial as well as mental wellbeing. Thus, they care about providing loans with affordable repayments.
They are backed by the Fair By Design Fund, NBS Ventures, Tomahawk.VC and Haatch Ventures.
Since you’re already here, we thought you might also like to discover the podcast series produced specifically for the FinTech industry followers and enthusiasts.
If you’re keen to dive deeper into the FinTech ocean, here are a few podcast channels to inspire you!
