All the hip folk talk about fintech, and particularly payments companies because they are mixing things up and disrupting a world that has traditionally been ruled by large banks. Analysis provided by CB Insights highlights how investment in the fintech (financial technology) sector reached over $12 billion in 2014, and how companies in this sector are now ‘unbundling’ banks. With that in mind CB Insights have recently released analysis into the top 18 billion-dollar companies, and out of those 18 ‘fintech unicorns’ 8 are payments companies. These are the top payments companies (by valuation) that are disrupting the payments industry. Admittedly, i didnt know who most of these payments companies were, so i made a point of finding out more about them. In this post, i share some of my findings about these unicorn payments companies:
Payments Companies #1 – Square
- CEO: Jack Dorsey
- Headquarters: San Francisco, USA
- Website: Square
- Valuation: $5 billion
- Description: Square’s tag line is “making commerce easy”
- Square are trying to simplify buying (for you and me) and selling (for small and large companies by offering merchants card readers for credit/debit cards and mobile payments)
- Facebook likes: 396,938
- Twitter followers: 30k
- LinkedIn followers: 63,826
Payments Companies #2 – Stripe
- CEO: Patrick Collison
- Headquarters: San Francisco, USA
- Website: Stripe
- Valuation: $5 billion
- Description: Enable companies to accept payments online and through mobile apps
- Facebook likes: 4,029
- Twitter followers: 48.9k
- LinkedIn followers: 14,211
Payments Companies #3 – One97
- CEO: Vijay Shekhar Sharma
- Headquarters: Noida, India
- Website: one97 is the parent of Paytm – the payments “flagship company of One97”
- Valuation: $4 billion
- Description: One97 is the parent company of Paytm – “Pay through mobile” – which is India’s largest mobile payment services platform. Paytm offers payment gateway (merchants) and digital wallet (for you and me) service
- Facebook likes: 1,097, 793
- Twitter followers: 71.4k
- LinkedIn followers: 19,651
Payments Companies #4 – Powa Technologies
- CEO: Dan Wagner
- Headquarters: London, UK
- Website: Powa
- Valuation: $2.7 billion
- Description: Offers retailers a cloud based e-commerce platform that simplifies the purchasing process for consumers
- Facebook likes: 20,189
- Twitter followers: 2,022
- LinkedIn followers: 5,487
Payments Companies #5 – Mozido
- CEO: Todd Bradley
- Headquarters: Austin, USA
- Website: Mozido
- Valuation: $2.385 billion
- Description: For merchants offers a cloud based Point of Sales (POS) solution, and offers a global consumer based mobile payments solution for both the banks and unbanked population
- Facebook likes: Could not find an official Facebook page
- Twitter followers: 1,000
- LinkedIn followers: 2,238
Payments Companies #6 – Adyen
- CEO: Pieter van der Does
- Headquarters: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Website: Adyen
- Valuation: $2.3 billion
- Description: A global outsourced payment solution provider, enabling merchants to receive payments through various channels – i didnt want to say multi-channel payment solution!!
- Facebook likes: 1,023
- Twitter followers: 3,566
- LinkedIn followers: 8,812
Payments Companies #7 – Klarna
- CEO: Sebastian Siemiatkowski
- Headquarters: Stokcholm, Sweden
- Website: Klarna
- Valuation: $2.25 billion
- Description: An e-commerce company that provides checkout payments services, and consumer protection, for online businesses
- Facebook likes: 17,595
- Twitter followers: 4,497
- LinkedIn followers: 15,357
Payments Companies #8 – TransferWise
- CEO: Taavet Hinrikus
- Headquarters: London, UK
- Website: TransferWise
- Valuation: $1.008 billion
- Description: Enable you to send money abroad with minimal fees
- Facebook likes: 173,626
- Twitter followers: 22.8k
- LinkedIn followers: 8,362
Payments Companies:
Interesting that 4 out of the 8 companies are European based, 1 payment company is from Asia and 3 from North America. As we hear about more and more innovation happening in Asia, it will be interesting to see if or rather when the geographical shift away from Europe and North America to Asia starts to happen… For more information about the companies, click on the above links. What did i conclude from the above…? In short, payments is THE place to be. I hope this has given you a quick flavour of the payments companies disrupting the payments industry!
Source: CB Insights – 15 Of The 18 Fin Tech Unicorns Are In Payments Or Lending