The fintech scene in France is booming. The amount of investment has snowballed five-fold from $62.5 million in 2014 to $327.9 million in 2018. Below are the leading startups behind the growing French fintech ecosystem:

1. Younited Credit

With $122 millions of funding, Younited Credit is building the biggest peer-to-peer crowdlending platform in continental Europe. Operated in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Germany, Younited Credit’s advanced credit scoring and underwriting technologies can rapidly process customers’ request for a loan online. Customers can borrow anything from €1,000 to €50,000 without talking to an actual bank. It also offers attractive rates of return to investors-lenders and competitive loan rates to borrowers. As of the end of August 2018, Younited Credit had financed more than €900 million in cumulated loan volume, with over €400 million in assets under management.

2. Ledger

Ledger is a Paris-based startup that develops blockchain security solutions. Its flagship product is a secured hardware wallet that supports over 1100 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP. Ledger also launched the Vault – an enterprise security solution for financial institutions. It combines its own custom operating system with secure hardware to provide crypto-asset protection for companies. It’s $75 million Series B round is the largest Series B round in a cryptocurrency startup. It now has $85 million in funding in total.

3. Baobab Group (Formerly known as Microcred)

Baobab is the leading digital financial inclusion group focusing on serving individuals, micro and small businesses in Africa and China. Baobab has over 650,000 customers operating in Burkina Faso, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. Founded in 2015 as Microcred, Baobab has raised around $120 million of funding.

4. October (Formerly known as Lendix)

October is a leading online SME lending platform for business loans, enabling investors to lend money directly to small- and medium-sized enterprises. So far, it has over 15,000 lenders, supporting over 570 projects and lending over €260 million. Currently operating in France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, October is planning to further expand across Europe. October has around $70 million of funding in total. Its $37 million series B round led by Allianz and Idinvest Partners was the second largest deal in 2018.

5. Wynd

Wynd is an omnichannel commerce platform that allows the total convergence between digital and points of sales. Their platform is designed to create and manage all sales channels in-store and out-of-store. Currently, Wynd is supporting over 90 large clients in their digital transformation covering over 18,000 stores across the world. It has recently raised an $82M Series C with Natixis as one of the lead investors.

6. Alan

Alan is a digital health insurance platform aiming to make healthcare simpler, smarter, and better. They are disrupting the health insurance segment by delivering a superior user experience with an excellent price-quality ratio health plan. Alan has recently closed a €40 million Series B round led by Index Ventures, which is also behind other leading fintech firms such as Robinhood and TransferWise.

7. qonto

Qonto is a digital-only challenger bank targets for SMEs and freelancers, serving over 25,000 companies. Users will get a French IBAN, one or multiple debit cards and the ability to send and receive money. Its user-friendly interface can automate expense tracking, classification and bookkeeping. To date, qonto has around $36M funding and managed over $2 billion in total transaction volume so far.

Join the Global Fintech Revolution

As the fintech segment is growing rapidly, it is crucial for finance professionals to have a solid understanding of fintech. This is why CFTE has launched the CFTE’s online fintech executive certificate, which is designed to help working professionals to gain a comprehensive understanding of financial technology. Lecturers and speakers of the programme include an Oxford fintech expert, Fintech CEOs, and global investors, providing a good blend of theoretical and practical insight into fintech. CFTE also offers an artificial intelligence in finance specialisation to help learners to gain deep inside into the application of AI in finance. Join CFTE now to embrace the fintech revolution. 

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