Payments companies are racing to connect disparate systems across the country and around the globe, and they made up one of the largest categories on our 2024 Fintech 50 list. Candex and Carry1st, which made their debut on the Fintech 50 this year, are both tackling global connectivity. Candex helps large businesses pay their international vendors through one platform without having to undergo the cumbersome process of onboarding each one to their systems individually. In the past year, it has expanded into Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korea, bringing the total number of countries where vendors can be paid to 45.
Meanwhile, Carry1st is supporting the growth of in-demand gaming franchises like Call of Duty in Africa by helping game developers accept local payment methods across the continent. That’s a key step for growth on the continent since local payment methods dominate–Africans don’t use credit and debit cards as often as we do in the U.S. Nium, on the list for its second year, helps businesses disburse funds in over 190 countries, collect funds in 100 currencies and issue cards in 34 countries. The company’s net revenue grew to $121 million in 2023, up from $88 million in 2022.
MXMX
and Plaid are data connection companies, enabling thousands of financial institutions to share data and offer personalized financial products for consumers. Last year, Plaid partnered with Dutch processor Adyen to launch pay-by-bank in North America, a service allowing consumers to pay for items directly from their bank accounts instead of using credit or debit cards.
Payment processor TabaPay offers connection through a single interface for clients to access 15 different payment networks including VisaV
, MastercardMA
, local debit networks, The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network and the Federal Reserve’s newly launched system FedNow. TabaPay’s smart routing system chooses the lowest-cost method for funds transfers for its clients.
Here are the nine payments companies that made Fintech 50 2024:
Candex
Acting as a sort of master vendor, Candex moves invoices and payments through its system, eliminating the need for clients such as Dell, Danone and L’Oréal, to onboard each supplier individually. The company charges a 3% fee on each transaction it processes. In the past year, Candex has expanded into eight new countries including Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korea. Today, vendors in 45 countries can be paid within minutes.
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $85 million from Goldman Sachs, Altos Ventures, NFX and others.
Latest valuation: $300 million, Forbes estimates.
Date of last valuation: November 2023.
Bona fides: Annualized revenue grew to just under $20 million at the end of 2023, up from $7 million in 2022.
Cofounders: CEO Jeremy Lappin, 46, a serial entrepreneur whose last endeavor before Candex was a marketplace helping companies find headhunters; Shani Vaza, 47, a former research and development manager for market data firm SuperDerivatives.
Carry1st
Develops, licenses and publishes mobile games in Africa and runs a payments platform that enables in-app purchases across the continent for such popular games as Call of Duty: Mobile. That’s significant since local payment methods in Africa dominate over the card payments which reign supreme in North America. Carry1st’s other partners include Riot Games, Supercell and ActivisionATVI
.
Headquarters: New York, New York and Cape Town, South Africa.
Funding: $58 million from Bitkraft Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and GoogleGOOG
.
Bona fides: In 2023, the startup brought in $25 million in revenue.
Cofounders: Cordel Robbin-Coker, 37, a former vice president at Carlyle GroupCG
; COO Lucy Hoffman, 37, a former investment banker at Morgan StanleyMS
; and CTO Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu, 38, a software engineer.
GlossGenius
Appointment-booking and payments software company serving independent beauty businesses. Eight-year-old GlossGenius charges a monthly fee between $24 and $48, collects a 2.6% processing fee on payments and sells custom card readers. In the past year, it has added 19,000 customers and launched new tools for its clients including Genius AI, an AI-powered platform which creates personalized email marketing campaigns for salon and spa owners. Roughly 60% of its revenue comes from payments services.
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $70 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, Imaginary Partners and Left Lane Capital.
Latest valuation: $510 million.
Date of last valuation: July 2023.
Bona fides: The company’s gross revenue was $62 million in 2023, up from $38 million the year before.
Founder: Danielle Cohen-Shohet, 33, a former alternative investments analyst for Goldman Sachs.
Melio
Helps small businesses pay bills and get paid digitally, instead of through paper checks. Aiming to differentiate itself from larger competitor Bill.com, Melio focuses on embedding its payment technology into platforms like Shopify, enabling customers to make payments directly from these sites. It charges customers a 1% fee to expedite a same-day payment and 2.9% to pay by credit card. In 2023, leading bank technology provider FiservFISV
announced Melio’s platform for accounts payable and receivables will replace its existing offering for check-free business-to-business transactions.
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $506 million from Thrive Capital, Coatue and Accel.
Latest valuation: $4 billion.
Date of last valuation: September 2021.
Bona fides: Melio had 119,000 customers at the end of 2023, up from 94,000 the year before. Cofounders: Matan Bar, 39, a former director of global peer-to-peer payments at PayPalPYPL
; CTO Ilan Atias, 44, a former vice president at maritime data analytics firm Windward; and Ziv Paz, 39, who left Melio in February 2022.
MX
Enables clients to connect to customers’ financial data, interpret that data and build products around those insights. Its customers span traditional financial institutions and fintechs like U.S. Bank, Canadian bank CIBC and Stripe. In May 2023, MX announced it would provide its data access platform to financial institutions for free. The company then sells those institutions products for their end consumers, including mobile banking apps and personalized financial management tools.
Headquarters: Lehi, Utah.
Funding: $475 million from TPG Growth, Capital G and Canapi Ventures.
Latest valuation: $1.9 billion.
Date of last valuation: January 2021.
Bona fides: The company’s revenue was nearly $97 million in 2023, up from $92 million in 2022.
Cofounders: Executive chairman Ryan Caldwell, 47, and Brandon Dewitt, who died in November 2021 at 38 years old.
CEO: Jim Magats, 53, joined as CEO in 2022 after 18 years as an executive at PayPal.
Nium
A global network offering businesses real-time payments and card-issuing services, Nium can disburse payments in nearly 200 countries, collect funds in 100 currencies and issue cards in 34 countries. Nium’s customers include Mastercard and payroll provider Rippling. Its lead investors include two of the largest sovereign wealth funds in Singapore, Temasek and GIC. Nium expects to reach profitability in 2024 as it prepares to go public in late 2025 or early 2026, CEO Prajit Nanu says.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California.
Funding: $288 million from Riverwood Capital, Temasek and GIC, among others.
Latest valuation: $2.1 billion.
Date of last valuation: January 2022.
Bona fides: Net revenue was $121 million in 2023, up from $88 million in 2022.
Cofounders: CEO Prajit Nanu, 42, former director of business development at global compliance group TMF Group; chief business officer Michael Bermingham, 48, who spent nearly a decade in foreign exchange at trading firm StoneX; chief operating officer Pratik Gandhi, 58, formerly chief business officer at remittance company InstaReM.
Plaid
Connects consumer bank accounts to financial apps and services and counts many major fintechs as customers, including Venmo, SoFi, Rocket Money and Betterment. Plaid moves financial data across a network of over 12,000 banks, credit unions and financial institutions. In the past year, Plaid announced its partnership with Dutch payment processor Adyen to launch pay-by-bank in North America, a service that allows consumers to pay for services directly from their bank account instead of using credit or debit cards. Additionally, the company went live with instant payouts through Plaid Transfer, a service utilizing The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network and FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s first new payments system in decades.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California.
Funding: $735 million from Altimeter Capital, Silver Lake Capital and Index Ventures.
Latest valuation: $13.4 billion.
Date of last valuation: April 2021.
Bona fides: Today it counts 8,500 clients, up from 7,500 at the end of 2022.
Cofounders: CEO Zachary Perret, 36, and William Hockey, 34, who left Plaid in 2019 to start technology-focused bank Column, which launched in 2022.
Stripe
Founded in 2009 by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison, Stripe processes payments for online businesses. In the past year, Stripe launched a charge card program helping fintechs launch expense cards for their clients. Stripe counts OpenAI, AmazonAMZN
and UberUBER
among its customers. It also introduced upgrades to its checkout system, including access to over 100 different payment methods and the ability for merchants to display multiple one-click checkout options like AppleAAPL
Pay or Google Pay.
Headquarters: San Francisco and Dublin.
Funding: $8.9 billion from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst and others.
Latest valuation: $50 billion.
Date of last valuation: March 2023.
Bona fides: In the four days from Black Friday to Cyber Monday in 2023, Stripe processed more than 300 million transactions, with a total payment volume of $18.6 billion.
Cofounders: Brothers Patrick and John Collison, 35 and 33, respectively, sold their first startup, an auction-management system for ecommerce sellers called Auctomatic, for $5 million in 2008 before starting Stripe.
TabaPay
Seven-year-old payments software company that speeds up money movement for fintechs and banks. It has direct access to 15 payment networks including Visa, Mastercard, regional debit networks and the ACH bank-to-bank transfer network, which allows it to smartly route payments for faster speeds and lower fees. TabaPay counts digital bank Chime, bill-pay platform Melio and personal loan and credit card company Upgrade as customers. TabaPay was a launch partner for Visa+, a new service allowing consumers to send money between different mobile wallets like Venmo and CashApp. Additionally, TabaPay facilitated 13% of all volume on The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network in the third quarter of 2023, making it the second largest processor of RTP transactions.
Headquarters: Mountain View, California.
Funding: Mostly self-funded, it has raised $2.5 million from Aligned Partners and Softbank.
Bona fides: Net revenue in 2023 was $36 million, compared with $26 million the year before.
Cofounders: CEO Rodney Robinson, 60, who sold his second payments startup, Omney, to Mastercard in 2014; chief technology officer Marvin Mah, 61, who worked with Robinson at Omney; and chief revenue officer Manoj Verma, 57, a former business development executive.
