What is fintech?
On September 18, 1958 BankAmerica, a precursor to today's Bank of America mailed out 60,000 BankAmerica cards to their existing customers in Fresno, California. The town only had about a quarter million people in it, 45% of which were already BankAmerica customers. At the time there was no such thing as a "credit card" and certianly no regulation around such arrangements. Cards arrived ready to use and the first credit card network was born. The experiment was a huge success and a new piece of financial technology -- the credit card -- became available to American consumers.
Fintech stands for financial technology and according to Google Trends started becoming popular in about 2015. It commonly is associated with newer startup companies but isn't necessarily the case. We'll explore more in the rest of this post.
List of fintech companies
To see the full list of fintech and financial services companies you can login to the Employbl dashboard, head to the Companies page and filter for companies by Industry.
In the Employbl database we have over eight hundred financial technology companies in addition to over 1,600 financial services companies that are predominantly based in the United States. There's some overlap with companies being characterized as both. You can view all of these companies for free on the Employbl dashboard.
In this post we're going to analyze the data a bit more and showcase the top fintech companies that are based in the United States.
OG Fintech Companies
From the google search volume trend it looks like something happened beginning in 2015 that increased public interest in fintech. Let's start off by analyzing companies that were founded before 2015. This will include what in my mind in the OF fintech company -- PayPal which was founded way back in 1998 and whose success created the PayPal mafia -- early PayPal employees that went on to found and fund many multi billion dollar companies. After looking at some of these original fintech companies we'll look at fintech companies that were founded more recently and see if there are other ways we can slice the data.
These are the largest U.S. based fintech companies that were founded before 2015 based on our estimated employee count:
| Company Name | HQ City | Year Founded | Total Investment Amount | Company Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cognizant | Teaneck, NJ | 1994 | $241,000 | Digital Solutions to Advance Your Business |
| PayPal | San Jose, CA | 1998 | $216,000,000 | Spend, send, and receive money the way you want, simply and securely, with PayPal. |
| Visa | San Francisco | 1958 | We are a global payments technology company working to enable consumers, businesses, banks and governments to use digital currency. | |
| Intuit | Mountain View, CA | 1983 | $18,851,000 | We help our customers and communities overcome their most important financial challenges. |
| Docusign | San Francisco | 2003 | $536,200,000 | Helping the world become more agree-able with the DocuSign Agreement Cloud. |
| Square | San Francisco | 2009 | $601,166,784 | Invent today. Shape tomorrow. |
| Stripe | San Francisco | 2010 | $2,235,000,064 | The new standard in online payments |
| Blackbaud | Charleston, SC | 1981 | The world’s leading cloud software company powering social good. We're here to help build a better world. | |
| Coinbase | San Francisco | 2012 | $549,034,816 | Coinbase is the easiest and most trusted place to buy, sell, and manage your digital currency. |
| Toast Inc . | Boston, MA | 2011 | $901,950,016 | Toast, Inc. is a cloud-based restaurant software company based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company provides a restaurant management and point of sale (POS) system built on the Android operating system. |
| SoFi | San Francisco | 2011 | $2,975,062,272 | The finance company that helps people get their money right-save, spend, borrow, and invest in one app. |
| Mosaic | Oakland, CA | 2010 | $489,220,800 | Mosaic makes financing solar energy and other modern home improvements accessible and affordable for homeowners. |
| Affirm | San Francisco | 2012 | $1,520,000,000 | Buy with Affirm – and pay off your purchase in easy, fixed monthly payments |
| Carta | Palo Alto, CA | 2012 | $1,127,800,064 | Carta (formerly eShares) is an ownership and equity management platform trusted by thousands of founders, investors, and employees. |
| Lending Club | San Francisco | 2006 | $392,230,016 | Personal loans up to $40,000 |
| Tradeshift | San Francisco | 2009 | $1,061,212,160 | Reimagine procurement and payables. Get your supply chain connected to the future with digital marketplaces, payments, and apps. |
| Plaid | San Francisco | 2012 | $734,300,032 | Plaid enables applications to connect with users’ bank accounts |
| Chime | San Francisco | 2013 | $2,292,603,136 | Chime, the fastest growing challenger bank in the U.S. is a technology company focused relentlessly on helping our members achieve financial peace of mind. |
| Dataminr | New York | 2009 | $1,052,012,608 | Dataminr's clients are the first to know about critical events and breaking information, enabling them to act faster and stay one step ahead. |
| Blend | San Francisco | 2012 | $665,000,000 | Our digital platform brings simplicity and transparency to consumer lending. |
With the exception of a few all are based in the Bay Area or New York. I can already hear the hacker news comments now that Cognizant, Docusign or Mosaic aren't really financial technology companies. We collect this data from a knowledge graph of the public internet where a lot smarter nerds than me categorize these companies. That said, I don't feel bad at all standing behind these categorizations. I've previously written about Cognizant and other firms' h1b labor practices though now I'm thinking they need their own blog post given their involvement in fintech. If you ever wonder how FAANG get built or who employs the armies of content moderators for Facebook -- Cognizant is it. How they've built a multi billion dollar company on no financing is amazing and I'm sure there's a story there. As for Docusign -- they do a lot of signatures for finance which I guess is a financial technology. Mosaic is a solar crowdfunding company; the financial technology comes from the crowdfunding. Blackbaud has rolled up and consolidated a lot of the non-profit fundraising space. Anyways, the above list is most of the most established U.S. fintech brands and they were all founded before 2014.
Next up we'll look at companies founded in 2014 or later.
Recently Founded Fintech Companies
These companies were all founded at least six years after the financial crash of 2008. I've sorted them by those which have raised the most amount of money at the top. Our estimates on employee counts for smaller companies aren't quite as good since these numbers are harder to come by and constantly fluctuating. Without further ado here is a list of top fintech companies founded relatively more recently as interest in fintech has surged.
| Company Name | HQ City | Year Founded | Total Investment Amount | Company Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | Santa Monica, CA | 2016 | $2,101,000,064 | Fair Servicing, LLC operates as a software development company. The Company provides an application for car dealers which includes roadside assistance, routine maintenance, insurance, and driving features. Fair Servicing serves customers in the United States. |
| LendingPoint | Kennesaw, GA | 2014 | $1,931,553,664 | LendingPoint LLC provides consumer financial services. The Company offers personal loans to customers through its cloud-based systems and online processes based on credit scores. LendingPoint serves clients in the United States. |
| Figure | San Francisco, CA | 2018 | $1,551,588,992 | Figure Technologies, Inc. operates as a financial technology company in both the home equity and blockchain space. The Company offers consumer financial solutions for home improvement, debt consolidation, and retirement. Figure Technologies serves customers in the United States. |
| Brex | San Francisco, CA | 2017 | $1,457,120,000 | Brex makes credit cards and cash management easier and faster for growing companies. |
| RAMP | New York, NY | 2019 | $1,360,000,000 | The only corporate card that strengthens your finances. https://ramp.com |
| Digital Currency Group | New York, NY | 2015 | $1,300,000,000 | We build and support bitcoin and blockchain companies by leveraging our insights, network, and access to capital. |
| BlockFi | Jersey City, NJ | 2017 | $1,256,181,632 | BlockFi provides the wealth management products crypto investors need, all powered by blockchain technology. |
| Varo Money | San Francisco, CA | 2015 | $992,400,000 | Varo is an American mobile only neobank based in San Francisco, California. The company provides financial services through its mobile app and currently has 1 million customers. |
| Bakkt | Alpharetta, GA | 2018 | $932,499,968 | Bakkt, LLC provides software solutions. The Company designs and develops trading, warehousing, and commerce digital platform. Bakkt serves customers in the United States. |
| Archer | San Francisco, CA | 2020 | $912,700,032 | Archer is an aerospace company building an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft focused on improving mobility in cities. The company's mission is to advance the benefits of sustainable air mobility. Archer is designing, manufacturing, and operating a fully electric aircraft that can carry four passengers for 60 miles at speeds of up to 150mph while producing minimal noise. Archer's team is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. |
| Better.com | New York, NY | 2016 | $905,000,000 | Founded in 2016, Better.com democratized the home-financing ecosystem, replacing it with a digitized process that eliminates commissions, fees, unnecessary steps, and time-wasting branch appointments. In addition to providing mortgage rates in seconds, Better.com’s platform offers a digital marketplace featuring competitive quotes from an array of insurance providers for seamless purchase of a homeowner's insurance policy and instant access to leading real estate agents across the country. To date, Better.com has done $7.9B in home loans and $1B in insurance. |
| DailyPay | New York, NY | 2015 | $814,000,000 | Empower financial peace of mind with the gold standard in on-demand pay. |
| Liquidity | New York, NY | 2018 | $795,000,000 | Upfront Funding For Subscription Businesses. Converting MRR to ARR, upfront. Liquidity was founded to change the way startup companies deal with growth challenges. We believe that once your business model is proven, there is no reason to give away big chunks of it only to sustain growth. |
| LendingUSA | Thousand Oaks, CA | 2015 | $760,000,000 | Financing Important Moments in Life |
| ConsenSys | New York, NY | 2014 | $725,000,000 | ConsenSys is a blockchain software technology company founded by Joseph Lubin with headquarters in Brooklyn, New York and additional United States offices in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. |
| Secfi | San Francisco, CA | 2017 | $707,000,000 | SecFi, Inc. provides software solutions. The Company offers application for option tax planning, exercise financing, and shareholder loans. SecFi serves customers in the State of California. |
| Petal | New York, NY | 2016 | $704,600,000 | Petal Card, Inc. issues credit cards. The Company specializes in credit underwriting decisions with machine learning and analyzing customer's digital financial record and credit scores which allows to issue credit cards to the customers. Petal Card serves customers in State of New York. |
| UpLift | Menlo Park, CA | 2014 | $689,000,000 | The Enterprise Buy Now, Pay Later Solution for the World's Leading Travel Brands |
| States Title | San Francisco, CA | 2016 | $679,615,168 | States Title, Inc. provides platform as a service. The Company focuses on predictive analytics platform for the title insurance space for simple, safe, and accessible home ownership. States Title serves customers in the State of California. |
| Elevate Credit | Fort Worth, TX | 2014 | $665,000,000 | Elevate provides innovative, tech-enabled online credit solutions for a brighter financial future. |
| Trumid | New York, NY | 2014 | $658,249,984 | Trumid Financial LLC is a financial technology company offering connectivity and access to credit trading through technology and product design. Trumid seeks to use its product, data and the network effect to create transparency, liquidity and trade execution. Trumid is based in the United States. |
| Mission Lane | San Francisco, CA | 2018 | $650,000,000 | Dedicated to helping everyone have access to fair and clear credit. |
| MoonPay | Miami, FL | 2018 | $642,000,000 | MoonPay is a financial technology company that builds payments infrastructure for crypto. Our on-and-off-ramp suite of products provides a seamless experience for converting between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies using all major payment methods including debit and credit card, local bank transfers, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay. MoonPay is active in more than 160 countries and is trusted by 250+ leading wallets, websites, and applications to accept payments and defeat fraud. |
| Branch | Minneapolis, MN | 2015 | $633,120,000 | Branch is a mobile-first technology that helps hourly workers get ahead financially. |
| Upgrade | San Francisco, CA | 2016 | $587,000,000 | See if a personal loan is right for you. Checking your rate won’t affect your credit score. |
| Capchase | New York, NY | 2020 | $549,600,000 | Capchase is a fintech company that helps SaaS companies finance the growth of their operations with cash tied up in future monthly payments. The company was founded in 2020 by Ignacio Moreno, Przemek Gotfryd, Luis Basagoiti, and Miguel Fernandez and is based in New York, United States. |
| Melio | New York, NY | 2018 | $504,000,000 | Melio Payments wanted to build more than an efficient Accounts Payable tool. They wanted to build a service that helps small businesses keep up with business. A B2B payments experience that not only saves time but also significantly improves cash flow. A payment workflow so simple it helps businesses focus on their customers, not their back office. |
| Homeward | Austin, TX | 2018 | $501,000,000 | Homeward is a modern home finance company that helps real estate agents and their clients overcome the limitations of traditional mortgages. The Homeward Cash Offer eliminates the finance, home sale, and appraisal contingencies, enabling homebuyers to win with cash and, when necessary, to buy their new home before they sell their old one. Homeward has an office in Austin, TX, but operates with a fully remote workforce. |
| KEO World | Miami, FL | 2020 | $500,000,000 | Disrupting the Credit Paradigm |
Sorting by total investment amount certainly has it's issues but I think it gives a pretty good first glance indication into who some of the top fintech companies are in the United States. There's certainly a lot more reporting here to be done on fintech but I hope this list provides you a good starting point when positioning yourself as a salesperson, financier or jobseeker in the American fintech market.
If you'd like to see the full list login to the Employbl dashboard and begin playing around. For more continued reporting and to get in touch with me directly please sign up for the email list :)