Q1’20 was slow for fintech unicorn births, but remained active for fintech unicorn exits amid Covid-19.
As the coronavirus crisis continues to roil private capital markets, Q1’20 was one of the worst quarters in 2 years for VC-backed fintech. The quarter saw just 3 unicorn births, to a total of 67 unicorns globally worth a combined $253B (as of 4/22/20). In comparison, Q4’19 saw 8 new unicorns.
The 3 additions were:
- Pine Labs ($1.6B valuation), which offers a merchant platform and makes software for point-of-sale machines
- HighRadius ($1B), which aims to automate receivables and payments processes using AI
- Flywire ($1B), which helps institutions accept international payments
However, unicorn investors still saw big exits amid the pandemic, with Visa’s $5.3B acquisition of Plaid — a deal worth nearly double Plaid’s previous $2.7B valuation from December 2018 — and Intuit’s $7.1B acquisition of Credit Karma (pending close).
Most of the billion-dollar fintech companies are concentrated in North America, which is home to 38 fintech unicorns — more than half the global total. Following that are Asia and Europe, which both boast 12 unicorns each.
The top-funded fintech unicorns span across different countries, from the China-based Lu.com ($39.4B valuation), US-based Stripe ($36B), Brazil-based Nubank ($10B), to US-based Ripple ($10B).
Take a look at all of the underlying data and insights in our State Of Fintech Q1’20: Investment & Sector Trends report here.
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