An overview of the French Fintech landscape in 2018
Last year, we published a mapping of the French ecosystem together with our partner, France Fintech. This year, as the French Fintech ecosystem matures and starts targeting all areas of traditional financial services, including nichier, more technical aspects, we have chosen to publish a series of posts that dive deeper into each subsegment.
However, to be consistent with last year’s exercise and as we head into Fintech R:evolution next week (there is still enough time to join if you’re around!), we’ll start this series with a general overview.
Now, you will notice that some players are missing here, it’s because the number of fintechs in France has exploded last year. This also explains the breakdown of our mapping in several subsectors. We did not want to overload this first one with logos so we decided to highlight the most visible startups.
To give you a rough idea of how the French Fintech ecosystem has matured since the last Fintech R:evolution, here are a few numbers, just as food for thought:
The landscape has grown from 250 to 350+ fintechs, insurtechs and regtechs and, as a sector-specialist VC, we keep discovering new ones every day! That is a tribute to the work performed by France Fintech and all the major players such as France Digitale, La French Tech, Bpifrance, Bordeaux Fintech, generalist VCs, active business angels to structure a vibrant fintech scene amid a surge in M&A activity on the fintech precursors (think Fidor, think KissKissBankBank, think Leetchi, think Compte Nickel, Pumpkin, Dalenys,GreenPoint among others).
Another hugely positive trend for the French Fintech landscape is the tide of VC financing that is lifting all fintech boats. Our proprietary data for 2017 shows that a whopping € 240m was invested in French fintechs, which proves that Fintech frogs are increasingly attractive.
And while mega-rounds previously only took place across the Channel or the Rhine,the 2018 French Fintech funding race started off large fundraisings such as Ledger, Lydia app, +Simple, Sellsy and Margo Bank among others. In total Q1 2018 saw roughly € 140m being invested in French fintechs, which holds many promises for the coming quarters. We, BlackFin Techians, have the ambition to make sure this trend goes on to produce European champions.
