The top 15 UK-based fintech startups according to Dealroom

The financial technology sector is one of the most innovative and fast-growing industries globally. And the UK is home to some of the world’s leading financial institutions, with London being the centre of the action.

There are many reasons behind this. 

Firstly, the UK is home to a large number of financial institutions, making it a natural place for fintech companies to set up shop. 

Secondly, it has a long history of innovation in finance, dating back to the early days of the banking system. 

And last but not least, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has supported fintech firms and has put in place several initiatives to help them thrive.

Additionally, the UK fintech ecosystem is supported by a number of accelerators, incubators, and co-working spaces, helping startups to get off the ground by providing resources, advice, and networking opportunities.

Currently, there are many different types of fintech startups in the UK, ranging from those that focus on payments and banking to those that provide specialised financial services.

In this article, we have compiled a list of the top 15 UK-based fintech startups according to Dealroom. Check them out. 

Kuda Technologies

Founder/s: Babs Ogundeyi and Musty Mustapha

Kuda is a fintech company aiming to make financial services accessible and affordable for every African. The platform offers a better alternative to traditional finance by delivering services, including free money transfers, smart budgeting, and instant access to credit, through digital devices. The company is operational in Nigeria and the UK, and is expanding to more countries.

Vyne

Vyne is an account-to-account (A2A) payments platform designed for merchants. The fintech platform offers instant account-to-account bank payments, eliminating intermediaries while improving the consumer experience. 

Transak

Transak is a single integration platform for applications to enable fiat-to-crypto deposits from a global user base. 

The company does this by providing API-driven fiat payment methods to 100+ crypto assets and abstracting away the complexity of user KYC, risk monitoring & compliance, payment methods, and customer support. The company says its widget can be integrated into an app in just a few lines of code.

Plend

Founder/s: Robert Pasco, James Pursaill 

Plend is an ethical lending platform that enables wider access to truly affordable loans through The PLEND Score, a proprietary open-banking-powered credit system. The fintech company offers longer-term, sustainable loans at fair interest rates for borrowers missing out due to traditional credit scoring.

rhino.fi

Founder/s: Will Harborne, Dan Yanev, Ross Middleton

rhino.fi (previously DeversiFi) is a multi-chain platform that offers all the best DeFi opportunities to buy, trade, and invest in hundreds of different tokens on a single multi-chain platform.

Reef

CEO: Denko Mancheski

Reef is a Substrate-based Layer 1 blockchain with smart contract functionality. Based on a Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism, the network offers low fees and scalability, as well as a myriad of features, including native token bridges, on-chain governance, recurring payments, and much more.

SaltPay

SaltPay is a payment service and software provider helping small and medium-sized businesses to manage and grow their operations. The platform allows businesses to accept online payments through multiple options, including NFC, POS payment terminals, payment link solutions, and more. 

Additionally, the company offers various other services and softwares, such as issuer payment processing, cloud-native payments, and business management SaaS to global FinTechs, payment providers, banks, and MNOs.

Mina

Founder/s: Ashley Tate, Chris Dalrymple, and Andy Gunn 

Mina is a payment solution for electric vehicle (EV) charging, making it easy for fleet vehicles to be charged at home, work, or on the road. It results in one monthly bill for the fleet owner, simplifying budgeting and managing expenses.

Mina’s Homecharge product accurately pays the driver’s energy supplier for charging their EV at home. With the Mina Chargepass, drivers can charge in public with one single RFID card at over 5000 public charge points across the UK.

They can also check key insights, including the carbon intensity and emissions with their Carbontrack product, cost per kWh, location, and duration of each charge across their fleet.

Primer

Founder(s): Gabriel Le Roux, Paul Anthony

Primer is an automation platform for payments, helping merchants with the infrastructure they need to build better customer buying experiences. 

The platform enables e-commerce merchants and online payment facilitators to connect and maintain their entire payments ecosystem through a unified payments API and checkout. 

These connections include payment service providers (PSPs), payment methods, fraud providers, chargeback services, subscription billing engines, BI tools, loyalty, and rewards platforms.

DNA Payments

Founder/s: Arif Babayev, Nurlan Zhagiparov

DNA Payments is a vertically integrated omnichannel payment provider in the UK and EU. The fintech company helps businesses receive payments through POS solutions or online. Currently, the company serves over 65,000 merchants across the UK and is on track to be the 4th largest payment provider in the UK by the end of 2022.

Hyperexponential

Founder/s: Amrit Santhirasenan, Michael Johnson, Richard Gunn

Hyperexponential is an insurtech platform that provides mathematical modelling software for the commercial insurance sector. The software helps data scientists and underwriters build and update their pricing models to make data-driven decisions faster with minimal time and money on IT administration. 

Copper

CEO: Dmitry Tokarev

Copper is a provider of institutional digital asset custody and trading solutions. The company provides a gateway into the crypto asset space for institutional investors by offering custody, prime brokerage, and settlements across 500 digital assets and over 45 exchanges. In addition, Copper has built a secure suite of tools and services to acquire and safely trade and store cryptocurrencies.

Colendi

Founder/s: Bülent Tekmen, Bülent Tekmen

Colendi provides embedded fintech services that democratise banking services for consumers, merchants, and financial and non-financial institutions to overcome the limitations associated with legacy banking.

Powered by Artificial Intelligence and Big data, Colendi develops unique services based on scoring algorithms, combining new-generation financial technology solutions. The platform also provides fast and easy access to loans with the buy-now-pay-later model and other distinct financial services.

Ember

Founder/s: Aaron Shaw and Daniel Hogan

Ember is a software platform that automates the tax and accounting process for contractors, freelancers, and small business owners across the UK. 

Elliptic

Founder(s): Adam Joyce, James Smith, Tom Robinson

Elliptic has pioneered blockchain analytics for financial crime compliance and built an accurate crypto identity dataset in the market. In addition, it is working towards preventing, detecting, and pursuing criminal activity in cryptocurrencies. 

The company identifies illicit activity in cryptocurrencies, providing actionable intelligence to cryptocurrency companies, financial institutions, and government agencies.