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NOMINATIONS OPEN · CYCLE 2026 CLOSES 30 JUN 2026 · LIST PUBLISHED 08 SEP 2026

The Fintechly
47.

The annual editorial ranking of the forty-seven private fintech companies most worth knowing about right now — judged on what they are building, not on what they have already banked.

NOMINATE A COMPANY

Open to any private fintech in any geography. Nominations are free and confidential. Self-nominations are welcome — they simply do not earn points.

START A NOMINATION READ THE METHODOLOGY ↓
2,400+
nominations · 2025 cycle
38
countries on the 2025 list
15
operators & investors on the panel
1 in 4
first-time-on-list companies, 2025

SECTION 01 · THE PREMISE

A list a company can’t
buy its way onto.

01

What it is.

An editorial judgement, every year, about which forty-seven private fintech companies in the world are the most consequential right now - the ones the rest of the industry will be reacting to in twelve months' time.

02

What it isn’t.

It is not a fastest-growing list. It is not a fundraising-leaders list. It is not a regional shortlist. It is not a paid placement. There are credible league tables for those things - this is not one of them.

03

What it rewards.

Originality, technical depth, market consequence, real trajectory and quality of execution. A pre-revenue infrastructure team can outscore a Series-D neobank that has only added users. That outcome is the point.

SECTION 02 · THE CRITERIA

Five qualitative tests.

Each candidate is scored 1–10 on each criterion by the editorial board, then moderated by the external panel. Scores are weighted equally. There is no minimum revenue, no minimum funding round, no required age and no required headcount.

  1. 01

    Originality

    How new is the idea, and how clearly does it answer a problem the industry has not already solved well?

    REWARDS

    Building something the industry has not seen, or solving a known problem in a meaningfully new way.

    DOES NOT REWARD

    Adding a small feature on top of an existing product.

  2. 02

    Technical depth

    What is the defensible technical or operational moat, and how hard would it be to recreate?

    REWARDS

    Proprietary infrastructure, novel architecture, hard-won regulatory licences, real ML, real cryptography.

    DOES NOT REWARD

    A wrapper around someone else's API.

  3. 03

    Market consequence

    Is the rest of the industry copying, integrating, or reacting to this work?

    REWARDS

    Demonstrable downstream effects on incumbents, peers, regulators or distribution.

    DOES NOT REWARD

    Press coverage on its own.

  4. 04

    Trajectory

    Where is the company headed across product, distribution, partnerships, and pricing power?

    REWARDS

    Real velocity in the right direction. Revenue is one input here - never the only one.

    DOES NOT REWARD

    A vanity user count or one tentpole customer.

  5. 05

    Quality of execution

    Team, governance, capital efficiency, public conduct, regulatory standing.

    REWARDS

    Calm, well-run companies that conduct themselves seriously in public and in private.

    DOES NOT REWARD

    Hype, founder personality, fundraising news.

SECTION 03 · ELIGIBILITY

Five rules. That’s it.

No revenue floor. No funding floor. No regional caps. The published list reflects, every year, where the most consequential private fintech is actually being built.

  1. 01

    Privately held

    Independent or wholly-owned subsidiary of a private parent. Filing for IPO, listing publicly or being acquired by a public parent during the judging year graduates the company from the list.

  2. 02

    Operates in fintech

    Payments, infrastructure, neobanks, lending, capital markets, wealth, insurance, regtech, embedded finance, vertical fintech, crypto and stablecoin infrastructure. Neobanks included if the work is genuinely clever or revolutionary, not just user-additive.

  3. 03

    Working product or live pilot

    A pure pitch-deck company is not eligible. There must be something live, even if early.

  4. 04

    No unresolved Tier-1 enforcement

    Companies subject to an unresolved enforcement action by a Tier-1 regulator (FCA, SEC, OCC, ECB, MAS, ASIC, MAS-equivalent) are not eligible while that action remains live.

  5. 05

    Reachable references

    Willing to provide, under embargo, reference customers, investors or partners the editorial board can speak to confidentially. Companies that decline cannot be scored on Criteria 03 and 04.

EXPLICITLY ELIGIBLE

Pre-revenue infrastructure teams. Single-product startups. Companies headquartered outside the Western fintech corridors. Sub-scale neobanks doing genuinely original work. Companies that have never raised a venture round.

EXPLICITLY NOT ELIGIBLE

Public companies. Subsidiaries of public parents. Pure pitch-deck companies. Pure intermediaries with no proprietary product, technology or licence position. Anyone subject to live Tier-1 enforcement.

SECTION 04 · METHODOLOGY

A judging year in five phases.

Every step is documented. Every panel meeting is minuted. The recusal log is published with the list. If we change the methodology, we change it in public — and we explain why.

  1. 01

    JAN - MAR

    Open nominations

    The newsroom opens nominations and runs a parallel longlist exercise inside the editorial team. Anyone can nominate, including the company itself - but a self-nomination earns no points.

  2. 02

    APR

    Longlist of 150

    The editorial board reduces the combined longlist to roughly 150 candidates and sends each a private intake brief covering product, team, traction signal, regulatory status, and reference contacts.

  3. 03

    MAY - JUN

    First-hand reporting

    Reporters run at least one named-source conversation per candidate and prepare a structured score sheet across the five criteria. Companies that decline to engage cannot be scored on Criteria 03 and 04.

  4. 04

    JUL

    Panel moderation

    Fifteen external judges - operators, investors and academics, declared publicly on the Newsroom page - moderate the editorial scores. Conflicts are declared in writing and recused before discussion.

  5. 05

    AUG - SEP

    Lock and publish

    The final list is locked, the cover photography is commissioned, and outreach to winners begins under embargo. The list is published on a single Tuesday morning in early September with all profiles, panel notes and methodology live simultaneously.

READ OUR EDITORIAL STANDARDS

SECTION 05 · GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION · 2025 LIST

Where the list actually came from.

Forty-seven companies, thirty-six countries, twenty-nine metros — the broadest geographic spread in the franchise’s history. The mix shifts every year and is allowed to. No region is hard-coded.

47 COMPANIES · 36 COUNTRIES · 29 METROS · 9 REGIONS REPRESENTED

• 2025 LIST NA 12 EU 8 UK/IE 7 S.AS 5 SE.AS 4 E.AS 4 MENA 3 LATAM 3 AFR 2

MAP · FINTECHLY EDITORIAL. NOT TO SCALE; INDICATIVE OF METRO-LEVEL HEADQUARTERS OF 2025 LIST COMPANIES.

BY REGION · ALL ELIGIBLE

  • NA North America
    12 /47

    NYC · SF · TOR · MIA

  • EU European Union
    8 /47

    BER · AMS · PAR · LIS

  • UK/IE UK & Ireland
    7 /47

    LON · EDI · DUB

  • S.AS South Asia
    5 /47

    BLR · BOM · DEL

  • SE.AS Southeast Asia
    4 /47

    SGP · JKT · HCM

  • E.AS East Asia
    4 /47

    TYO · HKG · SEL

  • MENA Middle East & N. Africa
    3 /47

    DXB · RUH · TLV

  • LATAM Latin America
    3 /47

    SAO · MEX · BOG

  • AFR Sub-Saharan Africa
    2 /47

    LOS · NBO

SECTION 06 · THE PANEL

Fifteen named judges.

A rotating panel of operators, investors and academics chosen for the breadth of their first-hand exposure. Conflicts are declared in writing before any candidate is discussed; recusals are logged in public alongside the list.

01 · TEL AVIV

CHAIR

Yael Bar-On

GENERAL PARTNER

Redrock Capital

02 · BANGALORE

Ravi Iyer

CO-FOUNDER

Ledgr

03 · SINGAPORE

Mei-Lin Cho

HEAD OF FINTECH

Sovereign Singapore

04 · LAGOS

Camille Okonjo

OPERATING PARTNER

Atlas Africa

05 · LONDON

Alessandro Conti

MANAGING DIRECTOR

Index Ventures

06 · MEXICO CITY

Daniela Vargas

FOUNDER

Cobalto Pay

07 · SÃO PAULO

Tomás Ribeiro

GROUP CTO

Nubank

08 · LONDON

Helena Park

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Fintechly

SUGGEST A PANELLIST

SECTION 07 · A SAMPLE OF THE 2025 LIST

Six entries to give you
a sense of the bar.

These are six of the forty-seven — chosen here because they show the geographic and stage range that the list covers. The full ranked 2025 list, with editor’s rationale on every entry, is published on the franchise page each September.

  • 01

    Ledgr

    INFRASTRUCTURE BANGALORE

    A double-entry ledger primitive that 11 of the 30 newest licensed banks in South Asia have built on.

    READ

  • 07

    Cobalto Pay

    PAYMENTS MEXICO CITY

    Stablecoin-settled merchant acquiring across LATAM, with a regulator-engaged on-ramp model others are now copying.

    READ

  • 12

    Conduit

    STABLECOINS LONDON

    Cross-border B2B stablecoin rails moving real corporate volume - already a quiet primitive inside three larger PSPs.

    READ

  • 23

    Sora Insurance

    INSURTECH TOKYO

    Embedded parametric cover for SME platforms - the first Japanese insurtech to win a regulatory sandbox spot for AI underwriting.

    READ

  • 31

    Halo Markets

    CAPITAL MARKETS DUBAI

    A private-credit primary market for GCC family offices, fully on-chain, with a working secondary order book.

    READ

  • 44

    Tala Africa

    EMBEDDED FINANCE NAIROBI

    Lending-as-a-service across pan-African mobile-money networks; the only operator with live integrations in seven countries.

    READ
VIEW THE FULL 2025 LIST

SECTION 08 · PARTNERSHIPS

Sponsorship without
influence.

Four commercial surfaces support the franchise. None of them grants any influence over inclusion or ranking. Sponsors do not see the list before publication. This rule is audited by the standards desk.

TIER 01

Headline Sponsor

Presented-by line on the cover, the launch event keynote and full-year integration into The Fintechly 47 brand. One slot per cycle.

HIGH SIX FIGURES

TIER 02

Category Sponsors

Section-level visibility - for example, Payments, presented by ___ - across the published list and the landing page. Up to ten slots per cycle.

MID-FIVE TO LOW-SIX FIGURES

TIER 03

Launch Gala host

The annual gala rotates host city - London > New York > Singapore > Dubai > Sao Paulo. Tables, streaming rights and dinner co-hosts are available.

ON APPLICATION

TIER 04

The Yearbook

Printed and mailed to winners, judges and a paid subscriber list. Short, premium ad inventory; long-tail readership.

FROM £8,500

A FINAL WORD ON THE FIREWALL

Sponsors do not nominate. Sponsors do not score. Sponsors do not see the list before launch morning. Sponsors do not get a private heads-up on inclusion or exclusion. Any sponsor who attempts to circumvent this firewall is unwound from the cycle, named in the next Ledger, and is not invited back.

BECOME A PARTNER

SECTION 09 · FAQ

The honest
questions.

The questions founders, comms teams and investors ask us most. If yours is not here, write to [email protected].

NOMINATE NOW

NOMINATIONS CLOSE 30 JUN 2026

Nominate the company you think the rest of the industry will be copying in twelve months.

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