7 Nium
This was a year that saw many fintechs hit unicorn status. Nium is among the most prominent from Asia. The Singapore-based company launched in 2015 as a remittance fintech product called InstaREM, helping people make and receive payments in Australia, India, and Singapore. Its operators realized the true value wasn’t the product, but the infrastructure they were building to move money across borders.
This year Nium hit unicorn status on the back of a $200 million Series D raise. In partnership with Visa it began offering cards to customers in the E.U. and U.K. Its global footprint expanded to include Japan, and it is acquiring travel-card acquirers and payment services companies around the region.
8 Paidy
Japanese buy-now, pay-later leader Paidy was founded in 2008 in Tokyo as a software platform enabling consumers to buy online without a credit card. Since then it has raised $397 million in venture funding over 13 rounds, including a $120 million Series D in April. Although Japan is the world’s third-largest ecommerce market, Paidy was not well known outside the country.
That changed in September when PayPal acquired it for $2.7 billion, mostly in cash, giving the U.S. giant access to Japan’s leading BNPL business. This will help Paidy better connect its 6 million users to global brands and online marketplaces.
9 PB Fintech
Founded in 2008, PB Fintech is the developer and operator of two of India’s leading fintech platforms, PolicyBazaar and Paisabazaar. These provide Indians with access to credit, insurance, and other financial products, catering both to wealthy urbanites and the financially excluded. Policybaaar began as an insurance comparison website and has arguably done more to educate Indians about the need for insurance than any formal carrier: by 2020, it was selling more than 60 percent of all insurance policies in India.
PB Fintech capped this success with a successful National Stock Exchange IPO on November 15 that raised $785 million, the 10th largest IPO in Indian history. The deal initially saw FB Fintech shares rise on trading by 17 percent. Since then its shares have slipped, possibly caught in the drag of a bigger fintech IPO: the November 8 listing on the Bombay Stock Exchange of One97 Communications, the vehicle behind Paytm.
Paytm was India’s biggest IPO, raising $2.5 billion, but it was instantly trashed in public markets, with the stock dropping by 25 percent in its first hour of trading. Unlike Paytm, however, PB Fintech’s fintech platforms command their markets and generate profits. PB Fintech couldn’t avoid damage from Paytm’s flop but it has a good chance of looking back at 2021 as a major success.
