Who are the top 10 most influential FinTech companies in 2021?

By Gaia Lamperti

October 21, 2021

African Development Partners III Fund
APP
BNPL

FinTech

The FinTech industry is predicted to be valued at over £382 million by 2027 and the ecosystem is getting bigger and bigger with new key players driving innovation globally. But which are the most influential and recognised FinTech companies in 2021?

There are different factors determining the influence of a company on the FinTech community and they include measures such as valuation, funding, social following, and online visibility. New research conducted by broker company Utility Bidder analysed a number of different factors to find out which of the current FinTech companies are the most influential in the sphere.

Top 10 Most Influential Fintech Companies

Rank	Company	Category	Funding	Valuation	Twitter followers	Annual search volume	Overall score
1	Robinhood	Investing	£5.1 bn	£8.6 bn	503,400	28,320,000	7.22
2	Stripe	Payments	£1.6 bn	£69 bn	182,100	17,770,000	6.07
3	Kraken	Blockhain & Crypto	£23 m	£14.5 bn	781,800	23,990,000	5.64
4	Klarna	Personal Finance	£1.6 bn	£22.5 bn	33,800	27,560,000	4.9
5	Wise	Payments	£394 m	£8 bn	99,900	17,100,000	3.12
6	Current	Personal Finance	£293 m	£1.6 bn	546,500	417,800	2.82
7	Chime	Personal Finance	£1.1 bn	£1 bn	136,500	2,028,000	2.5
8	Gemini	Blockhain & Crypto	NA	£3.6 bn	295,300	414,700	2.33
9	Carta	Wall Street & Enterprise	£503 m	£4.9 bn	21,800	6,646,000	2
10	BlockFi	Blockhain & Crypto	£366 m	£2.2 bn	135,400	3,623,500	1.95

The analysis, called Influential FinTechs 2021, found that trading and investment app Robinhood is the most influential FinTech company of 2021, scoring 7.22 out of 10 in the influence ranking. This is largely due to the company being the most searched-for FinTech on the list, with over 28 million annual searches. But Robinhood has also but raised the greatest VC funding with £5.1 billion.

Much of that funding, as it is well known, is accounted for by the funds raised after the GameStock trading frenzy earlier this year but still, the app boasts over 13 million active users investing in stocks and funds commission-free.

When it comes to the highest valuation, Stripe, a San Francisco-based online payment service, comes in the first position The company is currently valued at a whopping £69 billion, 43 times more than its funding of £1.6 billion. The company has experienced rapid growth and is now investing in other startups like Monzo.

In third position, there is Kraken, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, with a Twitter following of over 780,000, far more than the majority of other FinTechs included in the report. Supporting over 70 cryptocurrencies and available in more than 170 countries, Kraken also recently became the first crypto exchange in the US to be granted a special purpose depository institution (SPDI) charter.

And finally, completing the top 5, we have two of Europe’s hottest companies: Klarna and Wise. With 26.3 million searches in the last year, Klarna has gained trust among consumers who have adopted the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ service in a big way, as evidenced by the firm’s $31 billion valuation too. The Swedish company has benefitted from last year’s e-commerce boom during the coronavirus pandemic and is now being adopted by a host of the biggest retailers in the world.

For Wise, it looks like the rebranding (the company was formally known as TransferWise) turned out successful. The company, which provides online money transfers abroad at a fraction of the cost of traditional banks, just recently debuted with an IPO on the London Stock Exchange, with a valuation of $11 billion.

As new FinTechs continue to disrupt the old way of handling finances and change the way we use, store and transfer money, keeping an eye out for the most influential players becomes vital to fully understand the sector’s trends and where the industry efforts should be directed.

October 21, 2021