The shift from the physical world to a more digitized community has brought new challenges for the fintech industry. As more businesses become digital and shift to online platforms, the need for safe, effective digital solutions continues to grow drastically. Fortunately, many fintech startups have established efficient tools to help the industry, providing everyone with seamless and secure payment experiences.

The current landscape and future trends

Electronic currencies dominate most countries’ financial systems. According to Forbes, the physical U.S. currency in circulation is only about one-tenth of the overall money supply, while the rest is in some digital form.

The global pandemic created an immediate need for digital services. Fewer people use physical currencies, and more people prefer to pay digitally. While this shift in the landscape opened the door for many opportunities, this also presented several new challenges.

Preferred channel of payment for SME sales (in percentages),The 2020 McKinsey Global Payments Report

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The digital growth of the payments industry has brought new and unique payment experiences. Still, these rapid changes also led to many concerns about payment security and online privacy. Ultimately, the rise of mobile payment apps created a demand for these tools and platforms to be safe, reliable, accessible, and quick.

Plug and Play experts have already shared their views on the payment industry. However, this article will present some top fintech startups paving a safer digital world.

The 13 fintech startups shaping the future of the payment industry

Flutterwave

Founded in 2016 in Lagos, Nigeria, Flutterwave has become a top fintech company in Africa. Based in San Francisco, this fintech startup offers businesses a seamless, secure, worldwide payment experience. Their API empowers banks and other corporations to make and accept payments, while their omnichannel, digital-based payment solution allows merchants to accept payments at the point of sale.

M10

M10 has transformed how banks handle domestic and cross-border payments by creating a platform that delivers instant, 24/7 domestic and cross-border payments without regulatory and monetary policy risk. Its cutting-edge technology eliminates the need for correspondent banking and nostro accounts, optimizing several critical use cases, including real-time payments, cross-border payments, and liquidity management; they also serve as a central bank digital currency, or CBDC.

The company’s payment system enables banks to process over $1mn of payments per second while remaining tolerant against hardware and software failures and malicious attacks.

Sila

Sila is a simple, secure, accessible programming suite for developers of financial applications. The startup offers fully compliant APIs, enabling fintech and cryptocurrency companies to move money, verify customer identity, and hold customer funds seamlessly. Sila offers five critical APIs: ID Verification, Link Account, Issue Sila via ACH, Redeem Sila via ACH, and Transfer Sila via Ethereum.

StormX

StormX is a global startup that leverages blockchain technology to revolutionize the fintech industry. The company provides a user-friendly app and Chrome extension that allows users to earn cryptocurrency. StormX is available in over 150 countries and partners with over 750 stores worldwide. Their innovative platform combines traditional cashback with blockchain to create a seamless user experience.

With StormX, crypto cashback is more accessible and rewarding than ever before. They add new stores daily to give everyone more options to earn crypto.

Gr4vy

Gr4vy is a payments orchestration platform that offers users the best of both worlds: scale and control. With Gr4vy’s solution, businesses can simplify payment stacks without the hassle of balancing everything themselves, saving time and resources and enabling companies to expand and explore new opportunities quickly.

The platform manages payment methods, services, and transactions all in one place, while eliminating single points of failure and shared infrastructure risks. Additionally, Gr4vy provides a centralized hub for reporting, monitoring, and managing payments' infrastructure.

Primer

Primer is a fintech startup that has created an innovative, open payment automation platform. With their seamlessly unified checkout and workflow systems, merchants can build flexible payment flows across multiple platforms. Their solutions allow businesses to connect to an array of services, including PSPs, fraud providers, account software, and BI tools, all through a single payment integration, while their Zapier-style workflow management interface streamlines payment processes.

Bankable

Bankable is an innovative payment solutions startup offering advanced Banking-as-a-Service features. Their platform streamlines payment processes for global corporations, banks, insurers, and SMEs so that they can generate new net revenue.

But that's not all, their core virtual account management platform is available in white-label or via APIs, enabling any corporation to deploy digital banking solutions, virtual account services, payment card programs, and eWallets.

Rapyd

Rapyd is a global fintech-as-a-Service platform changing how businesses move money worldwide. This fintech startup provides APIs that help companies integrate local payments and fintech capabilities into their existing systems and capitalize on opportunities in emerging markets.

The startup’s global payments network connects businesses to over 900 payment methods across 100 countries to pay companies and individuals virtually anywhere. And with four powerful platforms - Rapyd Collect, Rapyd Disburse, Rapyd Wallet, and Rapyd Issuing - businesses can create personalized fintech solutions like e-wallets and financial services to deliver better customer experiences.

Curve

Curve, is an innovative banking platform that consolidates all bank cards into a single smart card with its complementary app. One of the core features of Curve is that its users can continue using their existing bank accounts without topping up, making it a go-to choice among many.

The platform offers a variety of benefits to its customers. For starters, users can use it to pay abroad without worrying about additional fees and receive instant notifications and spending categorization. Also, the cashback feature rewards the users with an instant 1% cashback from popular merchants such as Amazon, Uber, and Netflix. Moreover, Curve offers a unique Time Travel feature, enabling customers to swap spend to a different card even after the payment.

Felix

Felix is a software platform that connects insurers, intermediaries, and customers in the UAE. They offer a marketplace that allows the insurance ecosystem to transact and deliver tailored products and exceptional experiences. This innovative fintech startup uses APIs and integrations to seamlessly push and pull data for creating customized quotes, issuing policies, and accessible payment collection.

Moov

Moov is rebuilding banking infrastructure for a cloud-native world without legacy technology dependencies. The company’s banking-as-a-service platform takes a developer-first approach of being open-source, portable to cloud providers or on-premises, modular for customization, and decoupled from any single bank program. Their protocols offer the first de facto standard for publicly-embedded payment infrastructure!

Subsbase

SubsBase is a fintech startup that enables businesses to acquire and retain more customers via comprehensive subscription management and billing solutions. With their cloud-based subscription and billing platform, SubsBase provides subscription-based companies with operational, analytics, and billing tools to streamline their subscriber management, freeing them to concentrate on their core product/service.

SubsBase caters to various subscription businesses, including SaaS, paywalls, exclusive content, offline services, and subscription boxes.

Volume Pay

Volume Pay is a payments startup that introduced a Plug-and-Pay checkout solution aimed at helping businesses achieve hyper-growth by slashing the costs of accepting customer payments and boosting conversion rates. Their platform is a one-stop shop with immediate access to internet payments infrastructure, rethinking the traditional value chain of payments gateways, acquirers, and processors.

With this solution, businesses and shoppers can seamlessly pay and get paid without the complexity of managing multiple payment providers and methods. Volume Pay offers immediate access to their platform, making transactions effortless and more efficient.

The future of fintech payments startups

The digital payments landscape has seen rapid growth, bringing about its own set of unique challenges. However, many innovative companies have already effectively addressed these concerns. The result has been significant industry growth and expansion towards exciting new digital advancements. These are some of the many fintech startups that have already started creating quick and efficient tools that effectively change how we pay.

Are you interested in learning more about innovative fintech solutions? At Plug and Play, we connect corporations and startups to drive innovation. Discover examples of innovation in financial services fostered by our fintech program.