ClickCease

The Unicorn Club – Rise of FinTechs

Prove
March 16, 2021

The global FinTech industry has been expanding through investments, acquisitions, buyouts, and partnerships. In terms of incorporations, hundreds of new FinTech startups form each week. And over the last few years, a few startups have attained the “Unicorn” status by crossing 1-billion-dollar valuations. This shows that the investors trust the innovations of the FinTech startups as well as a demonstration of consolidation of this market.

As per MEDICI’s analysis, there are over 80+ FinTechs that are Unicorns as of today. While a significant chunk of these Unicorns comes from the Payments segment, which has contributed 20.4% to this Unicorn club, segments such as Digital/Neoanks, Lending, InsurTech, B2B FinTech, etc., are also major contributors to the FinTech Unicorn club. We have mapped the FinTech Unicorns with their valuation and employee strength in the image below.

In terms of countries, the USA leads the race with 54.2% of Unicorns, followed by the UK with 12.0%. China (6%), India (6%), and Germany(3.6%) were the rest of the top 5 countries that led the race in terms of the number of Unicorns. In terms of valuation, Stripe leads the race with ~ $34.5 billion in valuation from the USA, followed by One97 communication (parent company of Paytm) with a valuation of over $16 billion, followed by Chinese cryptocurrency hardware company Bitmain Technologies (~$12 billion), US-based cryptocurrency company Ripple ($10 billion), and Brazil-based Digital/Neobank Nubank (~10 billion). In terms of number of employees, we estimate Klarna has the largest workforce (2,900–3,300 employees) followed by One97 Communications, which has the highest number of employees (2,700–3,100 employees), followed by Stripe (2,700-3,100 employees), and Nubank (2,700 -3,100 employees)

The past couple of years have witnessed greatly enhanced activity in the FinTech VC funding space, as can be observed in the increase in the number of Unicorns. In November 2018, there were 50+ Unicorns, and as of March 2020, over 80+ FinTech startups were valued at more than $1 billion. A few Unicorns that have joined the list include Bright Health, Sentinel One, Riskified, High Radius, and Kabbage.

To learn about Prove’s identity solutions and how to accelerate revenue while mitigating fraud, schedule a demo today.


Keep reading

See all blogs
Blog
Injection by Deception: How Fraudsters Are Hijacking Identity Verification Flows with Injection Attacks

Discover how injection attacks allow fraudsters to bypass identity verification by injecting malicious data, highlighting the critical threat of these sophisticated attacks on digital security flows. Learn to identify and defend against these evolving methods that hijack trust and compromise user accounts.

Ryan Alexander
June 11, 2025
Blog
Developer Blogs
Designing a Frictionless Onboarding Experience

Learn how to design a seamless user onboarding experience with best practices and real-world examples.

Matt Keib
June 11, 2025
Developer Blogs
Blog
The Age Gate is Closing: Texas Signals a New Era for Online Age Verification – Here’s Your Roadmap

New legislation is being proposed to use online age verification, requiring websites with adult content to implement "commercially reasonable" methods to verify user ages, signaling a significant shift in digital access and content regulation.

Mary Ann Miller
June 9, 2025
Blog