Fintech Start-Ups Poised to Make Records in Funding in 2017

The first half of 2017 has been hot for the fintech sector–particularly for start-ups in the industry–as investments in venture-capital-backed fintech companies are poised to make records this year.
According to a new report by CB Insights, investments in venture capital-backed fintech companies are on pace to increase by 19 percent this year compared to 2016, if investments keep going at their current pace.
Year-to-date, there have been 496 deals globally–representing $8 billion raised–suggesting that global fintech deal activity could surge ahead of 2016’s all-time high, the report states. In Q2 alone, global VC-backed fintech start-ups raised $5.2 billion across 251 deals.

In total, the report states that 26 global “fintech unicorns” are valued at $83.8 billion in aggregate, while five new fintech companies joined the ranks, valued over $1 billion, including: Clover Health, Robinhood, AvidXchange, Symphony, and Tuandaiwang.
North America lead the fintech unicorn pack with 15 companies, while Asia had seven and Europe totalled four.
That said, given the year that cryptocurrencies have had, blockchain and bitcoin startups drove in a large portion of start-up funding. CB Insights’ report states that blockchain and bitcoin start-ups were on the rise for the second consecutive quarter, rising 100 percent on a quarterly basis.
Case in point, a tech company  in mid-June raised more than $150 million through initial coin offering in under three hours, while another start-up company called Status raised more than $100 million. Bloomberg reported that Gnosis, raised $12.5 million in 12 minutes in April.
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Securities Disclosure: I, Jocelyn Aspa, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.