Carta Industry Spotlight Report: Global fintech fundraising is trending up in 2024
After a historically lackluster 2023, the fintech fundraising market has picked back up—through the first nine months of 2024, fintech startups on Carta combined to raise about $3.8 billion in new VC funding.
Through the first nine months of 2024, fintech startups on Carta combined to raise about $3.8 billion in new venture capital funding. That was already nearly equal to the $4 billion in total funding that fintech startups raised throughout all of 2023.
After fundraising plunged to historically low levels last year, it seems increasingly safe to say that the fintech fundraising market has picked back up.
The concept of “fintech” was created back when the idea of combining financial systems with technology was still a novel one. Today, just about every young company that helps its customers move, store, borrow, spend, or invest money qualifies as a fintech startup. Some of the most common sub-sectors within fintech today include payments, banking, personal investments, corporate finance, and crypto.
In terms of dollars raised, the first nine months of the year represented a strong bounceback for these fintech startups. Other metrics, however, present a more nuanced picture, suggesting that some investors are still placing their bets with care:
Fintech deal counts have held steady. Fintech startups on Carta are averaging 110 deals per quarter so far in 2024, compared to 111 per quarter in 2023.
At the seed stage, activity has slowed. Fintech startups on Carta closed fewer than 40 new seed deals in both Q2 and Q3. Before that, there’d been at least 40 fintech seed deals in 14 consecutive quarters.
Down rounds are on the rise. At least 20% of all new fintech investments have been down rounds in four of the past five quarters.
Bridge rounds remain common, too. At both the seed stage and Series A, nearly 50% of all fintech deals closed in Q3 were bridge rounds.
