Fintech 100: The most promising fintech startups of 2024

CB Insights’ Fintech 100 report, released on October 24, 2024, showcases the world’s most promising private fintech startups. Collectively, these companies have raised $7.2 billion across more than 370 disclosed equity deals, with over $2 billion secured in 2024 alone (as of 10/23/2024).  Nearly half of these companies are early-stage ventures, primarily at the Angel/Seed or Series A funding levels. 

The list features a diverse international representation, with 52 companies headquartered outside the United States, spanning 23 countries across six continents, including 17 firms from 11 emerging and developing economies. These startups are pioneering innovations across various sectors, including wealth management, embedded finance, and insurance, with a significant emphasis on deploying artificial intelligence solutions and enhancing financial inclusion. 

The list primarily includes early- and mid-stage startups driving innovation across fintech. Our research team picked winning companies based on CB Insights datasets, including deal activity, industry partnerships, team strength, investor strength, employee headcount, and proprietary Commercial Maturity and Mosaic scores. We also dug into Analyst Briefings submitted directly to us by startups.

CB Insights

In our exploration, we will analyse the naming strategies and domain choices of the leading fintech brands featured in the 2024 Fintech 100 list. 

Domain Names Highlights 

77 of the companies on the 2024 Fintech 100 CB Insights list use the .com extension. The extension has been the dominant force on the internet for decades, and customers naturally trust it.  

52 brands have invested in Exact Brand Match (EBM) domains. EBM domains are a natural choice for most internet users when searching for the company online, offering brand consistency and a stronger online presence.

Notably, none of the companies on the list uses hyphens in their domains, as hyphens make the domain harder to type and less intuitive for users.

Naming Trends in Fintech 100 CB Insights List of Companies 2024

Dictionary Words as Brand Names 

Using dictionary words as brand names is a popular trend. These names are easy to remember, globally recognisable, and versatile for marketing. 

Examples: Vanilla, Summer, Hawk, Capitalize, Worth, Found, Nomad, Adaptive, BillingPlatform, Collective, Finally, Canoe.

Short Names

Short names are quick to remember, easy to search, and simple to type.

Examples: OTO, Arta, Bilt, CheQ, Brim, Arch, Crux, ANNA, AiFi, Coda, Hawk, Lynx, Nala.

Personal Names as Brand Names 

Using personal names as brand names fosters intimacy, trust, and a human connection. These names make brands feel more approachable, creating a sense of familiarity and relatability for consumers.

Examples: Boldin, ANNA, Polly, Arta, Nala.

AI & Tech-Inspired Names 

With AI-driven financial solutions on the rise, many fintech companies integrate AI, automation, or futuristic elements into their names. These names suggest intelligence, efficiency, and innovation.

Examples: Norm Ai, Arteria AI, Resistant AI, Boosted.ai, Hyperexponential.

Financial & Banking Terminology

Some fintech companies incorporate words directly related to finance, banking, payments, or investment, making their brand purpose clear. 

Examples: Peach Payments, NayaPay, Payhawk, Workpay, 401GO, LoanStar. 

Namepicks

Finally

Finally is a Miami-based fintech company founded in 2018 by Felix Rodriguez, his wife Glennys Rodriguez, and Edwin Mejia. The company offers an AI-powered, all-in-one finance and HR suite designed to help small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) streamline their financial operations. Finally’s platform integrates essential business processes, including bookkeeping, payroll, bill payment, invoicing, expense management, tax preparation, and payment processing, into a single, user-friendly interface. This comprehensive approach allows businesses to manage their finances efficiently, reducing the need for multiple disparate tools.

Many SMBs today feel intense pressure to do more with less. The proliferation of SaaS tools means business owners have likely been talked into point solutions that miss the mark on productivity and cost savings, and just add noise and complexity. Financial hygiene is vital to business success. What we’re building at finally addresses finance, bookkeeping, and HR problems at their root. But even more importantly, it frees business owners up to focus on high-value and revenue-making activities.

Felix Rodriguez, CEO of finally

Founded in 2018 as Back Office with the domain BackOffice.co, the company rebranded in 2022 to Finally and secured the strategic-grade domain Finally.com. Rebranding often happens when a company’s original name no longer reflects its growth and long-term vision. As businesses evolve, aligning their brand identity with their future goals becomes essential.

One-word .com domains are powerful branding assets. They are easy to say, spell, and remember, making marketing more effective. A strong domain like Finally.com builds trust, improves visibility, and makes it easier for customers to find and engage with the brand.

Bilt

Bilt is the first program that lets consumers earn rewards on rent and daily neighborhood spending. Through partnerships with the largest property owners and operators in the U.S., Bilt enables renters in over four million units to earn Bilt Points just by paying rent, while landlords benefit from increased resident loyalty and cost savings. Bilt offers one of the most valuable rewards programs, including one-to-one point transfers to 18 loyalty programs, allowing members to redeem points for travel on 100+ major airlines and hotel partners or book trips through the Bilt Travel Portal powered by Expedia. Beyond travel, Bilt Points can be used for fitness classes at top boutique studios, shopping exclusive art and home decor through the Bilt Collection, rent credits, or even a future home down payment.

If you rent, you should have Bilt. I think a lot of what we built this for was for our generation coming up. You’re spending 40% — in some cities 50% — of your income on housing, and somehow your biggest expense gives you nothing back. So it’s just this really weird loop where you’re paying rent every month but you’re not able to build credit, you’re not getting rewards, you get no closer to owning a home. The whole cycle is broken and then you’re somehow supposed to figure everything else out with the other 50% of your income.

Founder and CEO, Ankur Jain in an interview for TheStreet

Bilt operates under the domain BiltRewards.com, but according to data from Archive.org, by the end of 2024, Bilt.com began redirecting to BiltRewards.com. Startups often add descriptive words to their brand names to secure a domain that aligns with their activity when the Exact Brand Match (EBM) domain is already taken or unavailable. Such domains may limit a company to specific services or products and introduce risks like web traffic diversion and email misdirection. Bilt.com is the natural choice for finding the company online, ensuring greater brand consistency and a stronger online presence.

NALA

NALA is a fintech company focused on making international money transfers to Africa fast, affordable, and secure. NALA allows users in the U.S., U.K., and Europe to send money to countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ghana with competitive exchange rates and no hidden fees. In addition to serving individual customers, NALA provides business solutions through its Rafiki API, enabling global businesses to seamlessly integrate and make payments into Africa.

Our journey begins with a bold mission: build payments for the next billion. Africa is currently home to 1.3 billion individuals, and according to the New York Times, by 2050, this number is expected to double to over 2.5 billion, making it the world’s largest population and workforce. This immense potential inspired us to take on the challenge of building a reliable and efficient payment system for this rapidly growing continent. The next billion doesn’t just include Africa but a majority of the worlds emerging markets NALA is looking to serve.

Benjamin Fernandes, Founder and CEO, NALA

The company ensures global accessibility with its websites, operating on the Exact Brand Match (EBM) domains Nala.com and Rakiti.com. Nala.com follows a CVCV (consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel) structure, making it rhythmic, easy to pronounce, and adaptable across languages and cultures. This naming pattern is widely used by global brands like Nike, Dove, Visa, Sony, and Lego, valued for its universal appeal and strong memorability.

Nala is also a personal name, meaning “queen,” “lion,” and “successful” in Swahili. It is famously recognised as the name of Simba’s lifelong friend in The Lion King, a strong and spirited heroine who eventually becomes queen of the pride. Our recent report highlights the benefits of using personal names as brand names, showing how they help build trust, foster a closer connection with customers, and add distinct character and authenticity to a brand.

Wealth.com

Wealth.com was founded in 2021 with a mission to modernise estate planning through innovative technology. The idea for Wealth.com was born out of Rei Carvalho’s personal frustration with estate planning. After selling Emailage, a leading fraud prevention platform, to LexisNexis in March 2020, he struggled to find a solution that allowed him to visualise his finances and estate plan together in a dynamic way. Instead of settling for a one-time, transactional approach, he envisioned a platform that could evolve with life circumstances and continually optimise estate plans over time.

To bring his vision to life, Carvalho partnered with Rafael Loureiro, now Wealth.com’s CEO, and former CTO at Emailage. Together, they assembled a team of experts across trust and estate law, financial management, data science, and security, creating a comprehensive and intuitive solution that redefined estate planning for the modern era.

I needed a dynamic view of my finances alongside an always up to date estate plan, and I knew I was not the only one.

If someone dies without an estate plan (or one that’s poorly drafted or out of date), their loved ones may be left to pick up the pieces. The burden of a lengthy probate process goes beyond time and money. Losing a loved one is unbearable and people shouldn’t have to feel additional pain picking up the pieces. We take a proactive approach to estate planning by creating an ecosystem that helps people create their estate plans, visualize them, make revisions and keep them updated over time, with all financial details in one place. Part of my legacy is to help build Wealth so that others can leave a well-managed, organized legacy for their loved ones.

Rei Carvalho, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman

Adding the .com extension to the brand name is a rising trend among companies with high-value domains, seen in examples like Booking.com, Crypto.com, Tiger.com, Cars.com, Blockchain.com, Cats.com, and Monday.com. This strategy streamlines the customer journey, strengthens brand recognition, and reduces dependence on third-party platforms, ultimately improving online visibility and enhancing the overall customer experience. Dictionary-word .com domains are powerful assets that shape customer perceptions, build trust, and drive long-term success.

Synctera

Synctera is a fintech company founded in 2020 that offers a comprehensive Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform, enabling businesses to build, launch, and scale financial products efficiently. With APIs, compliance support, and bank partnerships integrated into a single end-to-end platform, Synctera provides a faster and more compliant alternative to developing a solution for bank accounts, debit cards, charge cards, lending, money movement, and more.

Over the last year, we’ve grown quite quickly in terms of our customer demo and what’s happened is the fintechs we’re working with becoming more and more large and also more and more adept at what they want to build. And as a result, that’s made us really think about what differentiates us from our competition and I would say probably the most valuable component of what we do is this concept of the marketplace where we actually take the idea that you have and then once a week, we send out a note to all our banks and say, hey, banks, here’s this cool idea, are you interested. In that way we can facilitate the relationship building between the fintech and the bank and then ultimately, we introduce each other. 

Peter Hazlehurst, the CEO and co-founder of Synctera, in an interview for Fintech Nexus

The company operates under the EBM domain Synctera.com, an intuitive choice for users searching for the company online, boosting visibility and protecting its brand identity.

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.

The right domain name is an important consideration when it comes to building and protecting your brand. If you’re ready to take the next step and invest in a perfect domain name for your business, contact us to learn more about our available options and how we can help you get started.

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