Startups Directory

iCapital operates a B2B SaaS platform that democratizes access to alternative investments by reducing institutional minimums from $5-10M to $25-100K through feeder fund structures. The platform serves wealth advisors, asset managers, and financial institutions with a marketplace of 2,100+ funds, automated KYC/AML workflows, and portfolio analytics. iCapital generates revenue through subscription fees, investor charges, and revenue-sharing with asset managers, creating a network effect that strengthens as more managers and advisors join.

Canapi Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in early to growth-stage B2B fintech startups, backed by a network of 70+ banks and strategic investors (the Canapi Alliance) with $1.4B+ in assets under management. The firm combines venture capital expertise with deep regulatory knowledge and banking relationships, enabling portfolio companies to partner directly with major financial institutions. Since 2018, Canapi has invested in 20+ companies across fraud/identity, lending, payments, and financial infrastructure, generating 7 unicorns, 2 IPOs, and multiple acquisitions. Their unique positioning leverages the banking expertise of founders like Gene Ludwig (former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency) and the Promontory Financial Group legacy.

Bloom Financial provides revenue-based funding to e-commerce and direct-to-consumer brands, allowing companies to access capital between £10K and £10M without fixed monthly payments or collateral. The company uses 700+ alternative data points—including marketing performance, sales data, customer sentiment, and bank account information—to underwrite loans in real-time. Unlike traditional lending, Bloom charges a simple flat daily fee and allows early repayment with no penalties, making capital costs predictable and transparent for fast-growing digital brands.

Brex is a fintech platform that provides corporate credit cards, cash management accounts, and spend management solutions for businesses. It serves startups and mid-market companies with SaaS-driven tools for expense tracking, financial controls, and accounting integration. Brex differentiated itself by issuing high-limit credit cards to early-stage startups based on funding history rather than personal credit, and has since expanded to serve larger enterprises with comprehensive financial operations infrastructure.

Mercury is a modern online banking platform purpose-built for startups and technology-focused businesses. It eliminates friction in business banking by offering zero-fee checking and savings accounts, corporate cards, invoicing, bill pay, and spend management—all with a modern interface designed for founders. Unlike legacy banks that flag startup activity as suspicious, Mercury understands the funding and cash flow patterns of early-stage companies. The platform aggregates financial data across all accounts to provide real-time insights into company financial health.

Mambu is a cloud-native SaaS core banking platform that powers digital-first lending and deposit services for financial institutions. It replaces expensive, slow legacy banking software with a composable architecture where implementation takes months instead of years, integration takes minutes, and updates deploy continuously. Serving over 260 customers across 65 countries including N26, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Western Union, Mambu enables banks and fintechs to rapidly launch innovative customer journeys via APIs connected to payment providers and complementary SaaS services.

ClearBank is the UK's first new clearing bank in over 250 years, providing cloud-native banking and payment infrastructure to financial institutions and fintechs. Built on modern, scalable architecture rather than legacy systems, it offers real-time clearing, current accounts, FX trading, and embedded banking services. Unlike traditional clearing banks, ClearBank remains neutral—it doesn't lend customer funds or compete with its clients for end customers, making it a truly independent banking infrastructure provider.

Juni is a fintech platform built specifically for e-commerce and online marketing entrepreneurs, combining business banking, credit products, and financial analytics optimized for the unique cash flow patterns of digital businesses. The platform automates accounting workflows through 2,400+ integrations while offering credit cards, capital advances, and cash-back tailored to e-commerce operations. Juni differentiates by deeply understanding the irregular payment cycles and high transaction volumes typical of online sellers, positioning itself as a vertical-specific alternative to horizontal fintech platforms.

Moniepoint is an all-in-one financial platform providing payment processing, digital banking, credit facilities, and business management tools for small and medium-sized businesses across Nigeria and expanding internationally. The company operates a network of payment terminals integrated with mobile banking apps, allowing merchants to accept payments, manage inventory, and access working capital loans underwritten by transaction data. With 1 billion+ monthly transactions and $22 billion in annual payment volume, Moniepoint has become Nigeria's largest agent banking player, serving 10 million businesses and individuals.

Amelia is an enterprise conversational AI platform that combines deterministic workflows with generative AI to automate customer and employee interactions. The platform handles complex, multi-turn conversations across customer service, IT support, HR, and other business functions while reducing escalations to human agents. Unlike rigid rule-based chatbots, Amelia can orchestrate multiple AI agents and adapt to user requests that deviate from training data, delivering human-like interactions at scale. The company was acquired by SoundHound AI in August 2024 for $80 million.

Thought Machine builds Vault Core, a cloud-native core banking platform that enables banks to run any financial product they design using smart contracts and a real-time ledger architecture. Unlike legacy monolithic systems, Vault Core is cloud-agnostic, microservices-based, and allows banks to migrate existing products while innovating new ones without disruption. The company also offers Vault Payments for global payment processing. Backed by tier-1 banks including JPMorgan Chase, ING, and Lloyds Banking Group as both customers and investors, Thought Machine has become the infrastructure layer modernizing legacy banking systems.

Parker is a corporate credit card platform purpose-built for e-commerce brands, offering credit limits up to $10 million with cash flow-optimized underwriting based on business performance. Unlike traditional business credit cards, Parker provides flexible statement cycles (daily, weekly, or monthly) and credit limits 10-20x higher than competitors like Brex and American Express. The platform bundles cards, banking, bill pay, and financial intelligence at no additional cost, generating revenue through interchange and transaction fees.

Selina Finance provides fast, flexible secured lending products to UK homeowners, including HELOCs and homeowner loans backed by property equity. The company differentiates through speed (funds in 24 hours), transparent pricing (starting at 4.95% APR), and flexibility (interest only on amounts drawn). Founded in 2019 and backed by $361M in total funding, Selina has processed over $100M in HELOC lending and won industry awards for service excellence.

Flagstone is a UK-based fintech platform that aggregates 200+ savings accounts from 65+ banks into a single dashboard, allowing individual savers, SMEs, and charities to diversify deposits and maximize interest returns without paying management fees. The platform addresses post-financial-crisis gaps: declining rates, heightened bank risk sensitivity, and the administrative burden of managing multiple accounts. Flagstone takes a share of interest (up to 0.30%) rather than charging fees, and has facilitated £5 billion in deposits across 725,000 customers managing £17 billion in assets.

Backbase provides an AI-native banking platform that enables financial institutions to modernize their digital channels without replacing legacy core systems. The platform layers digital banking interfaces, data orchestration with agentic AI capabilities, and pre-built integrations on top of existing infrastructure. Backbase serves 150+ banks globally including Barclays, BNP Paribas, and Citibank, differentiating itself through singular focus on customer engagement and the ability to leverage banks' own data combined with external sources.

Atom Bank is the UK's first fully digital, mobile-only bank that launched in 2016 without physical branches. It offers residential mortgages, savings accounts, and business loans entirely through its app, using face and voice recognition for authentication. Built on modern cloud infrastructure (Google Cloud, Thought Machine's Vault Core), Atom leverages automation and digital-first processes to deliver competitive rates and a 4.8/5 Trustpilot rating with a Net Promoter Score of 89.

Capitolis operates a B2B marketplace and SaaS platform that enables global financial institutions to optimize their trading positions and access diversified capital. Using proprietary algorithms, the platform allows banks, hedge funds, and asset managers to eliminate redundant positions, reduce capital requirements, and connect with institutional investors. The company has optimized over $17 trillion in gross notional trades and transacted $76+ billion through its capital marketplace, serving 100+ financial institutions including major global banks.

Pismo is a cloud-native core banking and payments platform that unifies real-time payments, card issuance, digital wallets, and banking services through a microservices architecture. It serves banks, fintechs, and retailers across Latin America, Europe, North America, and Asia with a single SaaS platform rather than fragmented legacy systems. The platform processes over 4 billion API calls monthly and hosts 25+ million accounts handling $3B+ in monthly transactions. NOTE: Pismo was acquired by Visa in January 2024 for $1 billion and now operates as a Visa subsidiary.

Visa Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Visa Inc., investing in innovative fintech, payments, and commerce technology companies globally. The fund identifies and partners with early-stage companies across Series A-C and seed stages, providing portfolio companies with access to Visa's global network, strategic insights, and operational support. With a focus on emerging technologies like generative AI, stablecoins, and embedded finance, Visa Ventures has deployed approximately 48-75 investments across all stages, with over 50% of portfolio companies based outside North America.

⚠️ INACTIVE: Prime Trust was a technology-driven trust company that provided API-based financial infrastructure for fintech and digital asset companies, offering custody, funds processing, compliance, and transaction settlement services. The company served nearly 700 B2B clients including Swan, Abra, Dapper Labs, and Binance US. Prime Trust filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2023 and is no longer operating.

Fazz is a B2B neobank and payment infrastructure platform serving businesses across Southeast Asia, from warungs to Fortune 500 companies. The platform enables businesses to accept payments (e-wallet, bank transfer, credit card), maintain business cash accounts with 4% interest, access corporate cards, and utilize lending products like invoice financing. Fazz addresses the $300 billion funding gap for MSMEs by providing enterprise-grade financial tools at accessible price points, processing over $6 billion in annualized GTV.

Unit is a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that enables companies to embed financial features—checking accounts, cards, payments, and lending—directly into their products via APIs, SDKs, and white-labeled UIs. The platform reduces what typically takes 18 months of bank negotiations and compliance work into a 5-week deployment. Unit differentiates by owning its own ledger, the most critical and sensitive part of the ecosystem, delivering superior technical control and user experience compared to competitors.