Fintech Unicorns

It's always interesting to see which companies cut through the clutter and make it to the

unicorn club

, with valuations exceeding $1B.

CB Insights

has published an updated list of all the privately held unicorns for 2017, and amongst the 196 names, 21 (or 11%) fell within the financial technology category. The number is interesting, only because in August 2016, Business Insider published its own piece claiming there were

27 fintech unicorns

. So clearly, there are different methods (and criterion) for devising these lists.

Not surprisingly, most are consumer-facing, though some are B2B, and the largest number were in the US (11), followed by China (4) and the UK (2). The following countries each had one firm listed: India, Switzerland, Sweden, & Amsterdam. Interestingly, behemoth economies Germany and Japan had no fintech unicorns on the list. Within the fintech category, China's Lu.com had the highest valuation - at $18.5B, followed by Stripe - with a valuation of $9.2B.

Of the 21 fintechs, 4 have received over $1B in disclosed funding to date - Avant ($1.7B), Kabbage ($1.5B), Lu.com ($1.7B) & SoFi ($1.6B). The "most efficient", requiring the least amount of capital to achieve unicorn status were Robinhood ($176M) and Transferwise ($116.3M).

We have links to several of the unicorns listed below, and we also published

2017 Fintech IPO Bets

with four fintechs (3 on this list) that look to be ripe for IPOs in 2017. Interestingly, Alibaba's Ant Financial/ Alipay did not make this list, but perhaps that is because the parent company is public, and Ant Financial is a subsidiary, though it is rumored they will spin off under a separate IPO in the near future.

The list below also contains links to stories we've published on these firms previously on FintekNews.

Sources: CBInsights & Crunchbase