The tech startup industry has a number of hot industries — the Internet of Things marketplace is wide open, biotechnology is still growing, etc. Critics, like Annie Lowrey, are saying that the number of startups is actually shrinking. However, one industry that continues to gain momentum is financial services.
According to data compiled by Crunchbase, the financial services industry saw a 30% increase in funding announcements in July over the average of the past six months. Aside from financial services, only one other industry was in the green: mobile app startups.
What does this tell us? That, so far in 2014, FinTech has been growing steadily and July’s spike in FinTech deals may be becoming the norm. In 2014, the average number of funding rounds per month was around 10. July bumped the average to 13 and was a 60% increase versus the 2014 average.
There were 16 FinTech-related deals in the month of July that received substantial funding: Tiger Global invested $75 million into AvantCredit, Funding Circle raised a $65 million Series D round led by Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, and Union Square Ventures, and incubators and accelerators were particularly active in July as well. StartupBootcamp announced its new class of ten FinTech startups for its London incubator.
And 2014 is only half over. We’ve heard rumblings of a number of other FinTech funding deals either in the works or on the cusp of being announced, with a number of them in New York and London, two of the bigger FinTech hotbeds outside Silicon Valley. Sources tell Bank Innovation that SBT Ventures is working on a deal with a company involved in fraud prevention and detection.