Does money really make the world go round? Well, I’m not sure about that, whatever Liza Minnelli says, but what I do know is that getting money from pocket A to pocket B is a key area of focus in the global fintech scene right now.
Of the four main fintech segments that investors are most actively looking at (lending; personal finance; payments; and bitcoin/blockchain technologies), payment businesses are the most prolific.
Just take a look at one barometer: about a quarter of the fintech50 list are payment companies. Let’s see just how diverse the category of payments can be (spoiler alert: not very diverse!):
- AcceptEmail – electronic billing and payments using email
- Bottomline – payment and document automation solutions
- Clear2Pay – payments processing
- Dovetail – payments processing
- GoCardless – allows you to tap into the direct debit network
- Ixaris – applications based on prepaid card schemes
- Klarna – payment solutions for eCommerce
- Lemon Way – mobile payments
- PAYMILL – online payment solutions
- Pingit – mobile payments
- Currency Cloud – cross-border payments
- TransferWise – cross-border payments
And this is far from definitive: Azimo, Moni, TransferGo and numerous other European companies are not on the above list. And then there are the big players, US disrupters such as Xoom and Square plus the big guys (Apple, Paypal and even the Banks)....