Fintech 100: The most promising fintech startups of 2023

CB Insights has announced its annual Fintech 100 list, showcasing the top 100 most innovative and promising private fintech companies worldwide. The list, formerly known as the Fintech 250, highlights groundbreaking firms involved in areas such as A2A payments, spend management automation, embedded finance, and more.

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Using the CB Insights platform, our research team picked these 100 private market companies from a pool of over 19K companies, including applicants and nominees. They were chosen based on CB Insights datasets — including equity funding, investor profiles, business relationships, R&D activity, news sentiment analysis, competitive landscape, proprietary Mosaic scores, and Yardstiq transcripts — and criteria such as tech novelty and market potential. The research team also reviewed thousands of Analyst Briefings submitted by applicants.

CB Insights

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The Fintech 100 represents a diverse array of companies varying in maturity, product development stages, and funding levels. Being included in the CB Insights Fintech 100 is a prestigious accolade for fintech companies, signifying industry recognition and credibility. It serves as a valuable reference for investors and industry observers keen on tracking the leading innovators in the fintech sector.

In our exploration, we will delve into the naming and domain choices of the leading fintech brands featured in this year’s list.

Namepicks

Public

Public is an innovative platform for fractional investing, offering its users the opportunity to diversify their portfolios with a variety of assets such as stocks, ETFs, Treasuries, cryptocurrencies, and alternative assets.

Founded in 2019, the company originally operated under the domain HelloPublic.com, a choice influenced by budget limitations common in the early stages of a startup. As Public’s platform developed and its ambitions grew, the importance of a domain name that better aligned with its brand identity became clear. In a Twitter post from December 2023, Jannick Malling, Co-founder and co-CEO of Public.com, highlighted the importance of this shift. 

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We actually started with “hellopublic.com” – was just the cheapest among all the options we plugged into a spreadsheet during a brainstorm. But they don’t call it “internet real estate” for nothing. Just like it matters for your brand whether your store is on 5th avenue or in a random alleyway – it matters what your domain is. If physical world is “location location location”, digital is “trust trust trust”.

Jannick Malling, Co-founder and co-CEO of Public.com

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Premium domain names like Public.com are simple and memorable, elevating a brand’s online presence and credibility. These domains are akin to owning prime real estate in the digital world, offering companies a distinct advantage.

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Public.com – while obvs much more expensive – clean, simple, more serious, but still modern. And easy to remember. What’s easy to remember, becomes easier to trust. And finally, yes, works 2x-3x better for digital ads/cvr… but for non-digital (OOH etc), more like 50x-100x better. 

Jannick Malling, Co-founder and co-CEO of Public.com

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Switching to Public.com was a significant step for the company, making it easier for potential customers to locate and engage with them while also enhancing the brand’s reputation as reliable and authoritative. Choosing the right domain name can be a pivotal factor in amplifying a brand’s online presence and perceived reliability, similar to how a prime physical location increases a retail store’s prestige and customer traffic.

Payhawk

Founded in 2018, Payhawk has established itself as a premier spend management solution for businesses across Europe, the US, and the UK. This comprehensive platform integrates company cards, reimbursable expenses, accounts payable, and smooth accounting software integrations into one unified system, simplifying business transactions for all users. Serving customers in over 32 countries, Payhawk excels in maximising efficiency, managing spending at large scales, and maintaining business agility.

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Our goal with Payhawk is to empower global companies to reach their full potential by providing them with the financial system of tomorrow. They can manage all of their payments for their global employees and businesses from a single system without the need to deal with expense reports, manual reconciliations and multiple card providers. We streamline payments for the next generation of global companies.

Hristo Borisov, CEO and Co-Founder of Payhawk for EU Startups

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Payhawk initially operated under the domain Payhawk.io but later acquired the exact brand match domain Payhawk.com. The .com extension is widely perceived as the most credible and trustworthy, making its acquisition a significant step in establishing a company’s credibility and trust among potential clients. Additionally, the shift to a .com domain aids in brand protection, deterring others from using similar domain names. This is crucial for preventing market confusion and for the protection of the company’s intellectual property.

Clara

Clara is a leading spend management platform for companies in Latin America. It provides a comprehensive solution that includes locally-issued corporate cards, Bill Pay, financing options, and a software platform utilised by businesses throughout the region. 

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To keep the company’s financial control up to date, which is key for the future of management, all incoming and outgoing amounts and expenses must be tracked in the smallest detail. Clara’s corporate spend management platform has been able to save its customers up to one year when carrying out processes such as invoice conciliation, payments and financial time consuming tasks usually conducted manually by accounting teams. The objective is to simplify the routine expenses of any company, of any size or sector in which it operates, and releasing information with agility and transparency on a shared management platform.

Gerry Giacomán Colyer, Co-Founder and CEO of Clara

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You can find Clara at their exact brand match domain name, Clara.com. The company has skillfully harnessed the power of personal names in its branding strategy. According to our recent report, employing a personal name as a brand brings multiple benefits, like establishing trust, creating a more personal rapport with customers, and lending the brand a distinctive character and authenticity. The use of personal names as brand names has been a popular strategy in business for many years, reflecting their proven success as a branding tool.

Clear Street

Clear Street, established in 2018, is revolutionising the capital markets infrastructure to streamline market access for participants. The company is dedicated to developing a comprehensive platform catering to all types of investors across various asset classes worldwide. To achieve this, Clear Street has developed a unique, cloud-native system that aims to replace the outdated infrastructure prevalent in current capital markets. 

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We founded Clear Street to replace the outdated tech infrastructure being used across capital markets. It shouldn’t take six months to open an account or a year to begin trading a new asset class. Clients are demanding better technology and better service. Clear Street is stepping up to address this issue head-on. Our cloud-native platform provides the services and data that investors need to compete in today’s markets.

Chris Pento, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Clear Street

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Clear Street currently operates under the ClearStreet.io domain and also owns the EBM domain ClearStreet.com. Having a .com domain is pivotal as it is the most intuitive choice for users, significantly aiding in brand protection by preventing traffic and email leakage. This strategic approach strengthens the company’s online presence and enhances its reputation. Domains with dictionary words are easy to remember, straightforward, and descriptive, thereby projecting credibility and professionalism. This aspect is especially crucial for businesses keen on establishing trust and reliability among customers. Additionally, such domains provide a competitive advantage by boosting organic traffic and enhancing overall marketing effectiveness.

Collective

Founded in 2020, Collective is an all-in-one financial solution for self-employed entrepreneurs, encompassing services like company formation, tax, accounting, and bookkeeping. 

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Three years ago, we launched Collective with the mission to empower Businesses-of-One with the technology and team that they need to enable them to focus on their passion, not their paperwork. Today, 39% of the U.S. workforce and growing are solopreneurs and Collective has created the first all-in-one back-office solution to help deliver this rising population financial peace of mind. 

Hooman Radfar, Co-founder and CEO of Collective

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The company operates under Collective.com, exemplifying the strength of dictionary word .com domains as powerful branding tools. These domains are memorable and convey simplicity, authority, and accessibility, which are crucial for building consumer trust and recognition. Premium domains are strategic assets, greatly enhancing a brand’s visibility and credibility in a competitive global market. 

Highlights

80 of the companies on the 2023 Fintech 100 CB Insights list use the .com extension. This extension is one of the most widely recognised and trusted domains, making it a popular choice for businesses looking to establish their online presence. Customers naturally tend to trust .com, as it has dominated the internet for decades.

61 brands have invested in exact brand match domains. A solid online presence is critical to any company’s success. An exact match domain name ensures that the business will be easily found online, as the default domain is what customers will look for when trying to reach the brand. 

1 company uses a dash in its domain name, which can make the domain name harder to remember and create confusion.

While we make every effort to ensure the data on our site is accurate, complete, and up-to-date, we cannot guarantee its reliability. Our data is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, financial, or other advice. We strongly recommend that you independently verify any information before relying on it.

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A premium domain name is a valuable asset that can help your business stand out from the competition. Contact us today to learn more about premium domain names and how they can help your business succeed.

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