Payments firms were among the fastest-growing fintech companies before Covid. These startups went on an unparalleled tear as the epidemic triggered an increase in internet sales. Stripe and Plaid’s values roughly quadrupled in a year, hitting $95 billion and $13.4 billion, respectively. Marqeta is planning to go public at a valuation of $10 billion or more, up from $4 billion in 2020. That makes these firms among the best shares to buy for new and established investors.
This year’s Fintech 50 included ten payment firms. They vary from fraud-fighting firms to one that helps businesses to offer digital wallets to Latin American customers to one that aims to make bank transfers available in one day rather than five.
The payment firms that made the Fintech 50 in 2021
Arcus
Arcus‘ software is used by banks, fintech companies, and merchants in Latin America to provide digital wallets and online payments to their consumers. Thanks to Arcus, Walmart’s digital banking software Cashi allows Mexican users to deposit cash into their digital accounts and pay utility bills.
Bolt
Everything from fraud protection and reward programs to integration with buy-now, pay-later finance is covered by Bolt’s checkout software. Bolt customers may sell products to its 5.5 million registered users with a single click. Covid pushed its business to expand by over 100% in 2020, handling over $1 billion in e-commerce sales.
Finix
Finix gives businesses more control over credit and debit card processing by allowing them to keep a larger portion of the fees that merchants pay, resulting in a 0.4 percent increase in transaction costs. Finix’s business saw a 300 percent growth in 2020, as commerce grew at a rapid pace. Finix has pledged to put aside 10% of newly issued shares for investors of color in each new funding round.
Marqeta
Marqeta processes debit card transactions, allowing employers and customers more discretion over whether transactions are accepted. It is used by Instacart to limit the commodities that its food delivery workers may buy, therefore decreasing fraud. Marqeta’s on-demand-delivery clients processed three times as many transactions as a year ago thanks to Covid, while its buy-now, pay-later clients saw a fourfold increase in transactions.
Forter
Forter uses machine learning technology to assist merchants and banks in determining if a credit card transaction, points improvement, or item return is deceitful. When Covid hit the United States and customers began to act differently, such as having online orders delivered to shops for curbside pickup, Forter had to swiftly retrain its models to avoid rejecting too many transactions. In 2020, sales nearly quadrupled, hitting $10 million per month.
Orum
Employee paychecks, bank transfers, and bill payments in the United States might still take up to five days to clear. Orum intends to reduce this time to one day by utilizing machine learning to analyze transaction risk, allowing fintech and banks to transfer money to consumers more rapidly for transactions that are considered safe.
Plaid
Plaid connects fintech apps such as Robinhood, Venmo, and Coinbase to users’ bank accounts, allowing them to make deposits and payments. Plaid introduced new features at the beginning of 2021 that allows customers to simply switch their direct-deposit banks, and to allow lenders to swiftly verify borrowers’ income and analyze risk.
