The shift of the physical world to a more digitized community has brought new challenges that the Fintech industry is facing today. As more businesses are becoming digital and shifting to online platforms, the need for safe, effective digital solutions continues to grow drastically. Fortunately, many Fintech payments startups have already established efficient tools to help the industry, providing seamless and secure payments experiences for everyone.

The Current Landscape and Future Trends

Electronic currencies dominate most countries’ financial systems. In the U.S., 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 a rapid need for digital services. Fewer people are using physical currencies to pay 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 did bring new and unique experiences in which we pay, but these rapid changes also led to many concerns centered around payments security and online privacy. Ultimately, the rise of mobile payments apps created a demand for these tools and platforms to be safe, reliable, accessible and quick.

Plug and Play experts already shared their views on the payment industry. Today, we will discuss some of the fintech payments startups that are paving the way for a safer digital world. We believe that these 12 payments startups are changing the way we pay, creating a wider digital community in which everyone can feel secure in making online payments.

The 13 Fintech Payments Startups to Look Out For

Flutterwave

Flutterwave is a San Francisco-based fintech payments startup that provides a seamless and secure payments experience. It was founded in 2016 in Lagos, Nigeria, and quickly became one of the leading fintech companies in Africa. Their payments solution is available for businesses anywhere in the world.

Flutterwave provides an API that enables corporations such as banks to make and accept payments. They enable their merchant customers to accept omnichannel, digital-based payments at the point of sale.

A case study: When Uber decided to step into the African market, their first concern was being able to accept and payout in local currencies. By partnering with Flutterwave, this problem was quickly solved.

M10

M10 is a payments startup that created a modernized platform for banks to deliver instant, 24/7 domestic and cross-border payments without regulatory and monetary policy risk. M10's technology relieves the world of payments from correspondent banking and nostro accounts. M10 improves several critical use cases such as real-time payments, cross-border payments, liquidity management, connecting Real-Time Payment (RTP) systems, serves as a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and more.

M10’s payment system is purposely built for banks to process over $1 million payments per second, and be tolerant against hardware and software failures and malicious attacks. The database is immutable and the system uses a consensus protocol to protect against failures and attacks.

Sila

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Sila is a simple, secure, and accessible suite of developer tools for building financial applications. Sila’s API platform helps fintech and crypto companies quickly find compliant ways to verify customer identity, move money, and hold customer funds. Their platform allows developers to rapidly build financial applications and bring them to market. Sila offers five critical APIs: ID Verification, Link Account (using Plaid), Issue Sila via ACH, Redeem Sila via ACH, and Transfer Sila via Ethereum.

StormX

StormX is a startup that offers an app and Chrome extension that allows users to earn crypto in a multitude of ways. Their platform combines blockchain with traditional cashback to create innovative solutions for the fintech industry.

StormX’s reach is global and is currently available in 150 countries and over 750 stores around the world. Every day, StormX adds new stores to ensure everyone has an option for crypto cashback.

Gr4vy

Gr4vy is a payments orchestration platform built natively in the cloud that gives users scale and control of payments stacks. Their solution helps simplify payments stack without the balancing act. Gr4vy empowers businesses to grow and implement new services and opportunities with no additional cost, resources or development time.

Gr4vy’s cloud infrastructure manages payment methods, services and transactions all in one place, while eliminating single points of failure, and shared infrastructure risks. In addition, the platform provides a hub for reporting, monitoring, and managing payments infrastructure.

Primer

Primer is a startup that created an open automation platform for payments, enabling merchants to build payments flows through a unified checkout and workflows. Their solutions allow businesses to seamlessly connect to PSPs, fraud providers, BI tools, account software, and other platforms across their payments services stack using a Zapier-style workflow management interface through a single payments integration.

Primer’s payments infrastructure enables businesses to consolidate their ecosystems of partners across the entire payments services stack and enhance their payments strategy.

Bankable

Bankable is a startup that created innovative payments solutions by enabling Banking-as-a-Service, which allows any organization to rapidly deploy payments solutions. Bankable provides an exhaustive range of payments solutions under a “Banking-as-a-Service” model. 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.

Global corporations, banks and insurers, and SMEs can leverage their platform to streamline their payments processes and generate new net revenue.

A case study: Moneyou is a cross-border challenger digital bank launched by ABN AMRO. ABN AMRO and Moneyou leveraged Bankable’s multi-wallet and multi-card technology to launch a full digital bank targeted at millennials in The Netherlands and Germany, which ultimately allowed clients to have quick access to the latest banking services.

Rapyd

Rapyd is a global Fintech-as-a-Service platform. This fintech payments startup provides APIs that help integrate local payments and Fintech capabilities. Their Global Payments Network connects companies to all the ways the world likes to pay and the infrastructure to create personalized Fintech solutions, like e-wallets, cards, and financial services. With Rapyd, businesses can make payouts to companies and individuals anywhere in the world. With over 900 payment methods in 100 countries, businesses can open new markets, reach new customers, and create new opportunities anywhere.

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Rapyd’s four platforms - Rapyd Collect, Rapyd Disburse, Rapyd Wallet and Rapyd Issuing - allow for quick and simple ways to integrate Fintech and payments capabilities into any business model.

Curve

Curve, another payments startup, is a banking platform that consolidates all bank cards into a single smart card and app - without ever needing to leave their legacy banks or topping up.

Curve offers a variety of benefits to their customers: making all cards fee-free when spending abroad, receiving instant notifications and categorization of spending, earning instant 1% cashback from places like Amazon, Uber, and Netflix, and using their Time Travel feature which enables customers to swap spend to a different card even after the purchase was made.

Felix

Felix is a software platform that connects UAE insurers, intermediaries, and their customers. They offer a marketplace that allows the insurance ecosystem to transact more efficiently and deliver more relevant digital products and customer experiences. This startup connects parties via APIs and integrations to seamlessly push and pull data to create quotes, issue policies, and collect payments.

A case study: When Bayzat, a UAE insurtech startup, wanted to further monetize their captive customer base by selling motor insurance to them, they didn’t want to invest in building out their own digital motor insurance platform. As a result, Felix created a solution for them.

Moov

Moov is rebuilding banking infrastructure for a cloud-native world without any legacy technology dependencies. Moov’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 embedded payment infrastructure offered publicly.

Subsbase

SubsBase is a fintech payments startup that offers comprehensive subscription management and billing solutions that help businesses acquire and retain more customers. They created a cloud-based subscription and billing platform that empowers subscription-based businesses with operational, analytics and billing tools to efficiently manage their subscribers, taking away the entire overhead of subscriber's lifecycle management from the business and keeping them focused on their core product/service.

Subsbase empowers different kinds of subscription businesses, such as SaaS, paywalls, exclusive content, offline services, and subscription boxes.

A case study: When EatHeal moved to subscriptions, they came across many challenges, including cashflow issues. By partnering with Subsbase, they quickly solved their issue and created a more efficient system to track and monitor subscriptions.

Volume Pay

Volume Pay is a payments startup that created a Plug-and-Pay checkout solution to help businesses unlock hyper-growth by reducing the cost of accepting payments from customers and increasing 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.

Internet businesses and online shoppers can pay and get paid by removing the complexity of handling multiple payment providers and payment methods.

Fintech Payments Startups: A Conclusion

While the rapid growth of digital payments created new problems, many companies have already created solutions to these concerns. The changing landscape of the payments industry has led to a positive expansion of digital innovations. These fintech payments startups have already started creating quick and efficient tools that are effectively changing how we pay.

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