The flurry of fintech exits is just getting started

The Fintech IPO market is booming. 2021 has seen a flush of exits totalling €338B in value (including IPO, SPACs and acquisitions), already 3x vs. last year, or 2.6x the market cap of Goldman Sachs to put that into perspective.

Check out 2021 fintech exits globally

 
Breakdown by public debuts type:

• The major exit route for fintech companies in 2021 has been IPOs and direct listings, at a combined value of €217B, a more than 3x increase from 2020, led by the mega debuts of Coinbase and Robinhood, followed by Toast, Marqeta, Affirm, BrighHealth, Wise and other 27 companies.
• Fintech SPAC IPOs have already totalled almost €40B in 16 deals, up from almost nothing in 2020, led by companies such as Paysafe, Sofi and Hippo insurance and another €60B worth of deals announced by companies such as eToro, Bullish Global and Pagaya.
• Acquisitions totalled €81B (+50% year on year), led by the €23B Afterpay acquisition from Square. 

Regionally, US-based companies accounted for 70% of the exits, followed by Europe and Australia totalling 10% each. Asia's few major exits this year includes Linklogics, Billsdesk, Shuidi and Paidy, the scarcity is due in part to China's regulatory crackdown on fintech.

Looking ahead there is already an enormous pipeline of fintech companies in the process of hitting the public market. Ant Group, Stripe, Klarna, Nubank, PayTm are all looking to go public in 2021/2022, along with many others. These five giants alone have a combined private valuation of €330B, as much as this year total exits. Ant Group has undergone regulatory scrutiny and business restructuring and should go public, at an estimated €158B, which would make it the biggest fintech exit ever.

Next week we are going to release our Fintech Q3 2021 update. Subscribe not to miss out.

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In other news

⁉  Crypto Mystery: Has Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?  - Bloomberg investigates the quality of the reserves of Tether stablecoin. And Tether strikes back. We discussed stablecoins transparency last week.

📚 ‘We need people to know the ABC of finance: facing up to the financial literacy crisis”.

📱 “Bakkt Partners with Google to Introduce Digital Assets to Millions of Consumers”. Bakkt virtual Visa Debit Card will be added to Google Pay.

👎 El Salvador's Bitcoin Approach Is 'Contrary to the Ideals of freedoms' of Crypto by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin - Reddit thread.

🛍 “Debt for women has been rebranded as a naughty little treat” - The Guardian. How Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) companies are exploiting fourth-wave feminism to drive sales. If you missed it, check out our deep dive on BNPL.

💳Meanwhile, BNPL startup Afterpay released a report on the economic impact of BNPL: “Merchants using Afterpay gain $4.5bn in net economic benefits in 2021, including $8.2bn in new revenue”.

⛓ NFTs and LuLaRoe leggings: “most prominent NFT projects, things like Bored Ape Yacht Club and Pudgy Penguins, hold such a remarkably similar structure to Multi-Level-Marketing companies (MLMs) that they will also suffer from the same failures”- Napkin Math

Latest fintech deals:

The largest this week:

🇩🇪 N26 has closed a €700M financing round at a valuation of around €8.0B.  It becomes once again the most valuable German fintech startup.

🇮🇳 Crypto exchange Coinswitch has raised a $260M Series C at a $1.9B valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures. Crypto exchanges raised €3.6B in 2021, almost 10x last year's total.

🇫🇷 French startup Swile raised $200M Series D and joined the growing French unicorn club. In four years it conquered 13% of the meal vouchers market in France and is now expanding to all employee benefits and even internal comms tools. It also expanding to Brazil. Check out the acquisitions powering this expansion.

🇺🇸 Modern Treasury, a payments operations software provider, announced an $85 million Series C at a $2B valuation.

Other promising fintech deals from around the globe:

🇩🇪 Digital insurer Getsafe has secured another $63 million in funds, extending its Series B to $93 million. We spoke to the founder about their journey so far, and how“It all started when I broke my landlord's glass door and I went back to my parents' house…”

🇺🇸 Masterworks, the platform opening art as an asset for retail investors, raised $110M Series A at a $1B+ valuation. With low returns expected for stocks and bonds in the next decade, investors are increasingly seeking diversification, and art has generated returns 3x that of the S&P 500 over the last 25 years (13.6% per year).

🇳🇬 Mono, an African open banking startup, has raised a $15 million Series A round led by Tiger Global. Fintech funding in the continent is up more than 5x from last year.

🇺🇸 Energetic insurance, a data-driven insurtech that unlocks commercial solar financing, raised a $7M Series A led by Schneider Electric Ventures.

Read up on all the latest fintech deals in Dealroom.co

Notable exits:

Southeast Asian ride-hailing and payments firm Grab will increase its stake in Indonesian e-wallet OVO from 39% to 90% but then decreased its stakes to  79.5% to comply with local regulation. 

NatWest has acquired RoosterMoney, the provider of pocket money and financial education app for kids. Discover fintech companies targeting kids such as Greenlight and GoHenry.

Read up on all the latest fintech deals in Dealroom.co

Tip of the week

In the investment heatmaps section, you can visualize trends by locations, industries, subindustries and even custom tags. With the latter, you can compare funding for the hottest trends in finance: challenger banks and neobrokers are still leading but crypto exchanges and custodians are catching.

Stay tuned for our Fintech Q3 update coming out next week!

Job opportunities

Bitpanda is hiring across 100 positions, including communications manager for DACH, France and Italy. 

Spendesk is hiring for 82 roles across Paris, Berlin and London.

Discover 49,000+ job openings at fintech startups (login for full results)

Dive in

🔔 Fintech exits in 2021

📈 Fast-growing new fintech companies

Lorenzo Chiavarini

Innovation Analyst
Dealroom

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