Even as venture capital funding for the industry continued to fall in 2024, many fintech startups–especially those serving other businesses—flourished. Here’s the Forbes Fintech 50 for 2025.
By Jeff Kauflin and Janet Novack, Forbes Staff
After a bruising 2023, when market values for financial technology companies hit their lowest levels in years, the industry showed signs of recovery in 2024. Valuations for some of the biggest private fintechs like Stripe and Ramp ticked back up, and publicly traded players such as Affirm, Coinbase and Robinhood saw their stocks rise. That didn’t stop worldwide funding for private fintechs from continuing to slide–to $34 billion last year, down from $42 billion in 2023 and a record $144 billion in 2021, according to CB Insights.
Our new 2025 Fintech 50 list is full of entrepreneurs who have found ways to thrive in this constrained and sometimes turbulent environment. Fintechs that serve other businesses–most of which fall under our Payments, Business to Business Banking and Wall Street and Enterprise categories–did particularly well, claiming 31 of the total 50 spots. Those three categories also account for 13 of the 18 companies that made their Fintech 50 debut on this year’s list.
This is the tenth year we’re publishing the Fintech 50, and only two companies–both of which are in the payments business–have made the cut every single year: Plaid and Stripe.
(You can see the full Fintech 50 2025 list here.)
Among the first-timers on our 2025 list, one example of the business services trend is Parafin, a San Francisco small business lender founded by three former Robinhood data scientists. It tries to underwrite loans more effectively by using data from marketplaces like Walmart, DoorDash and Amazon, instead of relying on credit scores or personal guarantees from the owners. In 2024, Parafin reached 25,000 borrowers and its revenue more than doubled to $75 million. Squire, a New York company led by former lawyer Songe LaRon, is another example. It helps barbershops do everything from schedule appointments to accept payments; last year it processed $740 million in transactions, up from $590 million in 2023.
Newcomer DailyPay, led by former marketing executive Stacy Greiner, who became CEO last year, lets employees access their wages right after they’ve earned them, instead of waiting for a weekly pay check. The 10-year-old company counts more than 1,000 businesses, including Hilton and Kroger, as customers, and last year it expanded to become available to more than five million employees.
Another first-timer, DataVisor, comes from the ever-growing fraud prevention space, where fintechs try to outsmart sophisticated criminals. Cofounded by Chinese immigrants Yinglian Xie and Fang Yu, both with U.S. PhDs in computer science, it uses patented machine learning algorithms to flag fraudulent payments and grew its revenue 67% in 2024, reaching $50 million. DataVisor is one of eight Fintech 50 winners led by female CEOs–the most in the 10 years we’ve published the list.
One area of business services that didn’t grow its presence on our list this year: banking-as-a-service startups that help other companies offer financial products like checking accounts. In the wake of the Synapse collapse, this corner of fintech still faces intense regulatory scrutiny and daunting barriers to growth. The two companies bucking this trend are Column and Lead Bank, both of which made our list and, significantly, have their own bank charters.
To select who made the Fintech 50, our team of 10 reporters and editors analyzed hundreds of companies, evaluating everything from business growth and product novelty to leadership team diversity. We interviewed both CEOs and industry insiders. To be considered, startups need to have their headquarters or substantial operations in the U.S. and not be part of a public company.
Personal finance startups also made a strong showing on the Fintech 50 this year, taking up eight spots. One notable newcomer was True Link, which offers a debit card with customizable spending controls for individuals with dementia, mental health challenges or special needs. True Link has 157,000 active cardholders, its revenue reached $30 million in 2024 and it turned a profit for the second consecutive year.
Profitability emerged as another theme–more companies are posting real profits after investors started demanding it. On this year’s list, 13 winners, up from eight last year, say they were profitable on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis in the previous year. The money makers range from home equity lender Figure (which does business on the blockchain) to life insurance startup Ethos to payments company TabaPay.
A few categories of fintechs continued to hold only a few spots on our list, largely a reflection of broader challenges in their industries. Real estate claimed just two winners and insurance claimed four. Crypto took three, though the embrace of digital assets by President Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress will likely be a boon to the industry this year.
Across all categories, lending businesses seem to be making a comeback from years ago, when they were often maligned by industry investors and CEOs. Among our 18 first-timers, six are lenders, including Arc, Aven, Bilt, Figure, Imprint and Parafin.
One company made a surprising comeback after making our list in 2020 and then falling off for four years after that: Nova Credit. Founded in 2016, its first product was Credit Passport, a service that lets immigrants import their credit histories from their home countries. Lenders like American Express signed on because it helped them accept more customers, but when Covid hit and immigration stopped abruptly, demand for Nova’s tech vanished.
Later in 2020, the startup used its expertise to launch a second line of business focused on cash flow underwriting, the emerging technique of assessing borrower risk based on consumer bank account inflows and outflows. Nova’s cash flow underwriting products are now its fastest growing line of business–a demonstration of the adaptability that has propelled a growing number of fintechs to build sustainable businesses.
This list was originally published on forbes.com. With additional reporting from Nina Bambysheva, Martina Castellanos, Steven Ehrlich, Kelly Phillips Erb, Brandon Kochkodin, Stephen Pastis, Hank Tucker and Francesca Walton.
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