Top European Fintech Startups You Must Know

• 16 January 2020 | 1373 Views | By Mint2Save

Fintech is also known as financial technology. The term Fintech includes a massive range of products, business models and techniques that are transforming the financial services industry. It infers to everything from cashless payments, Robo-advisors, crowdfunding platforms, to virtual currencies.

Why Would one use Fintech?

Financial technology has made it easy and convenient for people around the world who don’t have access to traditional banking services. The advancement of fintech has forced traditional lenders and asset managers to encompass new digital technologies. Now wealth managers have to play against Robo advisors. 

Robo advisors are automated financial planning services. Thankfully due to high-tech algorithms, these services are available at all times and is more accessible than a conventional asset manager. 

Components Employed in Fintech

Fintech plays well with other fields of computer science. Fintech uses technologies like big data, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), blockchain and artificial intelligence. AI is a significant factor that financial institutions use. AI can study, analyze and predict market changes, investments made by clients. 

The most common use of it is to make AI-powered chatbots used for faster customer service. Big data is also considered as a valuable factor in financial technology like AI. It is used to analyze the client’s average expenditure, and form patterns and thus essential in improving fraud detection.

Automated credit card verification uses an algorithm with big data as its base. As for blockchain, it’s only beginning to be implemented in this new-age technology. Blockchain was developed for the sole purpose of financial technology and its safe usage. It is said to have a more significant influence in the coming years. It ushered and continues to nurture a new market full of possibilities, jobs, and competition. In practicality, it has several businesses within its functioning and the operations are much more efficient with financial technology.

Capitalization and Startups 

Fintech is revolutionizing the way people pay and borrow money, and investors are buying it. Global investment in the fintech sector has increased since 2010. Startups on payment and lending technologies received the majority of the funding. 

The incentive for this rise in finance is that fintechs’ popularity is growing fast and is becoming more common and popular among the major economies. Startups, still, have a difficult time becoming well established and that could be due to various reasons like underfunding, competition, etc. 

While many of such startups have failed due to the rise in competition, many startups have prospered with ranking models. In some regions in the European Union, like the UK, Germany, France, fintech startups have established very successfully. Some of these startups that have had drastic success rates are mentioned below.

Top Fintech startups in Europe 

• Wefox

Wefox group is a startup company that is challenging the current status of other companies in the aspect of consumer transparency and is setting the bar for the ideal insurance industry for the future to safeguard the individual’s rights. They are a company that believes that ownership of data is a fundamental human right. 

They are aiming to simply and reinvent the way we handle insurance by disrupting the current industry. Wefox had also won the Fintech Germany Award in 2019. CEO Julian Teicke founded the group in 2017, and it has quickly risen to one of the major startups in fintech. The company is dedicated to increasing awareness of the imminent data revolution. 

• Transferwise

Transferwise is a startup company whose mission is to achieve complete transparency in finance. They show the charges beforehand and don’t have any hidden fees or bad exchange rates.

They don’t use any complicated and automated systems; instead, they have the usual customer service option to help in case any problems arise. It allows its consumers to send and earn money from their friends or family abroad. 

They are available in 59 countries and are always adding new currencies from customer suggestions. They make the International transfer of money easier, cheaper and much faster than conventional banking services.

• N26

N26 is a mobile bank that is intended to help customers manage their bank account anywhere and at any time. It makes the concept of opening a bank account hassle-free and can be done in minutes. It helps the customers to save, spend and also keep a track of their money. 

It’s also perfect for spending money while traveling as it provides free payments in any currency and no foreign exchange fees at any location in the world. N26 uses fingerprint identification, advanced 3D secure technology and operates with a full European banking license thus making it a secure banking experience both in stores as well as online. 

• Raisin

Raisin is a deposit marketplace that has the best interest rates across Europe. Customers can safely and securely deposit online with deposit guaranteed up to a hundred thousand Euros. It also allows its customers to transfer funds across Europe with any of their partner banks from their homes. 

The company was founded by Frank Freund, Tamaz Georgadze and Michael Stephan. The platform makes it clear and simple on what is the best online savings account for an individual. 

• B2B Pay

B2B Pay is a fintech startup that specializes in currency conversion and operates over two hundred countries. The edge it has over a bank is that it can save 80% more compared to it. It provides its customers with a very convenient user-friendly virtual bank account, but it is available only to its clients in Europe. 

Virtual bank accounts in B2B helps customers track transactions in real-time. problems that used to persist like reconciliation, pooling accounts management can now be done in a very efficient manner. 

Fluctuations in foreign currencies can be ignored with b2b payments, all while increasing profit margins. The Application interface is easy and convenient to use, which leaves no confusion. And of course, it is extremely secure while handling transactions.

• Klarna

Klarna is a Swedish bank that provides services online like post-purchase payments, payment solutions for selective stores. They reduce the occurrence of risk for buyers and seller by handling customer payments and stores’ claims. The company has over sixty million users and over ninety thousand online merchants and continues to grow.

Klarna operates over a concept called Instant Financing, and it is helping merchants control how people checkout after shopping online. The increased sales and increasing conversions shows us the benefits of instant financing. It has made payment much more user-friendly. It speeds up the buying process and wins over customers who want instant gratification. 

• Spotcap 

Spotcap is a company that provides loans that suited to their needs and are very flexible in nature. They give SMEs an edge by saving time by planning their financial aspects in the form of loans. 

The company stands out with its smartly designed algorithm that evaluates an applicant in a way that the loan can be granted at the earliest possible time without wasting too much money or time.  

The algorithm the applicant’s data and offers loans up to 100,000 euros. Rocket Internet is a startup incubator that is backing it up . It has fueled several entrepreneurs and business owners and as a result raised over a hundred million euros.

• BitPay

This company founded in 2011 was targeted to provide mobile checkout services to companies who accept bitcoins as payment. It now facilitates Bitcoin payment almost worldwide, providing service on six continents. BitPay has achieved its goal of creating a secure bitcoin payment method today that is accessible to bitcoin users.

The project is being expanded to creating a secure bitcoin wallet using an open-source platform along with a BitPay card to give its users a quick way to convert bitcoins and spend them where Visa payment is supported. BitPay is currently the world’s largest bitcoin payment processor.

• Monese 

Monese is a UK company that provides a better alternative to people looking for banking accounts and money transfer services. It has an instant open mobile account that does not need residential information and functions like a regular banking account. 

It operates with a low charge on its users with a fixed monthly fee. It is a great solution to the slow, dull process of opening a bank account and much more flexible for non-residents in the UK.  It has made banking much more secure, easy to handle, safe and efficient.

• Qonto 

Qonto provides the perfect business account for people who are entrepreneurs, freelancers and SMEs that can replace or acts as an extra banking account. Alexander Prot and Steve Anavi had founded Quonto of frustration from their own experiences with banking. 

Its versatile design makes it suitable to adapt to any legal form, all types of companies and team sizes from about 1 to 250 members.  It’s a fully-fledged solution as it provides all the tools required to manage the company’s finances. They are very diligent on transparency and simplicity when it comes to pricing and has fast customer service.

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