On the face of things, it doesn’t appear to be a great time for fintech startups in the United Kingdom. According to KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech report, only 215 UK M&A, PE and VC fintech deals were completed in the first half of 2023, down from 392 in the first half of 2022.
That represented a 57% drop from $13.8 to $5.9 billion, but despite this, the UK remains a global leader in the fintech space. And it is by no means the only territory where funding has dropped.
Globally, total funding and the number of deals dropped from $63.2 bn across 2,885 deals in the second half of 2022, to $52.4 bn across 2,153 deals in the first half of this year.
“Despite a slowdown in UK fintech investment compared to last year, the UK remains at the centre of European fintech innovation with British fintechs attracting over half the funding of Europe,” says John Hallsworth, client lead partner for banking and fintech at KPMG UK.
More promising news for those working in the sector has come from the recent CB Insights Fintech 100: The most promising fintech startups of 2023 report, which has highlighted a number of UK-based startups to watch.
In fact, this year’s winners represent 24 different countries internationally, with the UK taking second place with 12 winners. And while 43% of the selected companies are headquartered in the U.S., this is actually down 10% on last year.
Account-to-account payments, spend management automation and embedded finance are just some of the notable areas of fintech focus for startups this year. That compares to 2022’s high-performing digital lending, financial services, insurance and market map segments.
UK fintechs to watch
From Accelerant, an insurtech company, to Allica Bank and Apex Global, which is involved in cross-border payments, there is also Banked and Volt, A2A payments fintechs, Payhawk, offering spend management, and Genesis, involved in capital markets.
LemFi is a mobile wallets and remittances company, Moniepoint handles payment acceptance, Liberis is in lending, and Moneyhub and Thought Machine both offer core banking and infrastructure.
Whether you’re looking for a new role in an established fintech or want to explore a job at a startup, the Tech Informed Job Board is the ideal place to start your search. It features thousands of listings in companies that are actively hiring, such as the three below.
Software engineer, Ripple, London
Ripple is seeking a Software engineer to join the team, building trading and liquidity infrastructure at Ripple. In this role, you will deliver reliable, high-throughput, low-latency (micro)services to support systematic market making, trading, and execution to deliver best-in-class liquidity to customers. You’ll also participate in the full software development lifecycle, and you’ll dive deep in researching and understanding what practices to bring from traditional financial systems to the crypto space and continuously raise the standard of engineering excellence by implementing and driving best practices for coding, testing, and deployment. To be considered, you will need two or more years’ of hands-on software development experience on large scale distributed systems, and experience building and deploying containerized applications (e.g. Docker) into modern distributed computing environments such as Kubernetes. See more requirements now.
Vice president, Start Path Emerging Fintech Lead, Mastercard, London
Start Path is Mastercard’s suite of award-winning global startup engagement programs, and the Vice president of Emerging Fintech is an integral member of the team focused on fostering partnerships with, and investments in, emerging fintech technologies, as well as supporting fintech strategy across the organisation. Through rigorous analysis and a structured process, you will perform research and analysis, synthesise data to uncover insights, and develop critical strategic recommendations around partnerships and investments. You should be a senior leader who is a strategic thinker well-versed in the fintech, startup engagement and venture capital domains, and be experienced in payments, banking, and fintech segments, with technical and systems knowledge foundation in each. Find out all the requirements now.
Engineering manager (Mobile) – Global Bank, SumUp, London
SumUp is seeking an Engineering manager to lead a squad of mobile engineers building and supporting the mobile banking features in the SumUp Super App. You will help to shape the technical vision and strategy for both iOS and Android apps, and will also contribute to building and maintaining strong developer relations inside the mobile chapters. You’ll support engineers to reach their full potential, mastering their current skills and developing new competencies to advance their personal growth. You should have seven or more years’ of software development experience, with three years’ working as engineering manager, be experienced leading co-located and remote agile teams and have solid experience in mobile app development for iOS and Android platforms and have a deep understanding of the mobile landscape, industry trends, and user expectations. Apply for this role today.
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