African startups BitPesa, Paga, Paystack, Yoco and Zoona have made it onto the Fintech 250 list compiled by research firm CB Insights, which selects the best global fintech companies based on a set of criteria.
The Fintech 250 identifies and recognises the 250 most promising, private fintech companies from around the world.
Kenyan startup BitPesa, a digital currency payments platform that accepts bitcoin payments and exchanges the bitcoin for local currencies, is on the list, alongside two Nigerian payments startups – Paga and Paystack.
Also included are South African fintech startups Yoco, a mobile payments provider, and Zoona, which uses technology to provide financial services to underserved and financially excluded communities across Africa.
Major global companies on the list include Kickstarter, Indiegogo, WorldRemit, Transferwise, and Stripe.
“From insurance to blockchain to lending to wealth management to regtech, and more; the list is comprised of companies in sectors from across the fintech spectrum and across market,” said CB Insights.
The 250 companies were selected using a purely data-driven and algorithmic process that uses CB Insights data, gathered via its machine learning technology The Cruncher as well as via several thousand direct submissions from firms and individual professionals using The Editor.
It considered several factors, including considering non-traditional signals including news mentions, sentiment, jobs data and hiring, social media, web traffic and usage, and partnerships.
CB Insights also quantified the health of the sector and industry the company is involved in, and assessed financial signals, including funding recency and total raised. Investor quality was also considered, with the company weighing the quality of the investors participating in deals to the company, judging investors based on exits, returns, and portfolio quality.
*Speaking of lists of top quality fintech startups, you can get a list of more than 300 African fintech startups delivered straight to your inbox here.
