All fintech companies of Ukraine since 1991

Ukrainian association of fintech and innovative companies has published a catalog of fintech companies of Ukraine 2019. It is a Ukrainian fintech market research that was held under the aegis of the National Bank of Ukraine and Visa. AIN.UA publishes an abridged version of the catalog.

Number of fintech companies in Ukraine

The number of fintech companies in Ukraine is increasing: in 2018 the market saw 21 new startups emerge. All in all, today there are over 100 fintech companies in Ukraine, over half of which have been established in the past three years.

Ukrainian fintech companies by year of incorporation

Until 2006, virtually no new fintech companies were created in Ukraine. The industry has begun rapidly growing since 2014, when as many as 9 technology companies were established in the field of financial services.

2017 and 2018 were record breaking years with 40 new fintech companies established within this period on the Ukrainian market.

Development directions of Ukrainian fintech

Ukrainian fintech comprises predominantly payment services that grew by 13%, though startupers do not consider this domain very interesting: in 2016 and 2017 the share of new companies in this domain was 38% of newly established companies, and in the last year the share was only 24%.

Personal finance/wealth management grew by 50% in the year 2018. All in all, five of six companies that furnish similar services to the domestic market emerged over the past two years. It signifies that the financial literacy of the population is on the rise.

More and more people are thinking about managing their financial assets: if previously it was solely the province of people with very high income, now this bar has significantly lowered.

At the same time, the interest to blockchain has not yet revived: after its peak in 2016 (38% of all new companies), in 2017 and 2018 each saw the emergence of only two companies operating in this domain.

The domain of consulting and analytical systems was quite popular among startups in the past three years and in 2018 it took over the domain of mobile wallets by popularity.

How developed are Ukrainian fintech companies

Most Ukrainian fintech companies are either at the stage of sales launch or business scaling, and only one in five is mature. A total of 8% of companies said they are at the stage of implementing the idea or a minimum viable product (MVP).

How many people do Ukrainian fintech companies employ

By and large, the fintech companies of Ukraine employ over 4,000 people. This is about 2.4% of the total number of employees in the field of information technology in the country.

Services geography

Today, 57% of companies work exclusively on the domestic market. However, most of them — 73% — plan to expand the field of activity and expand to overseas as well. Moreover, almost 60% of such companies are planning to do so as soon as this year.

Companies founded since the beginning of 2018 are more globally oriented: only 43% of them focus exclusively on Ukraine.

All in all, among the companies that provide services not only in our country, the most popular market is Europe, followed by post-Soviet countries and the U.S. Domestic fintech companies are least interested inexploring the markets of Asia and Africa.

In Ukraine, about 63% of fintech companies (both startups and mature companies) operate without attracting funds from thirdparty investors. And for companies established since 2018, this indicator is more than 70%. Such figures generally coincide with global trends, and some discrepancies are due to the small number of fintech startups in Ukraine.

Among companies that raise funding the sources of such funds are distributed roughly evenly between private investors and venture capital funds. At the same time, approximately one fifth of companies continue to rely on their own funds. Only one has held an ICO to raise investment and no one is going to do so in the future. 22% of companies in the market do not plan to raise additional funding at all. Others rely mainly on private investors and venture capital funds.

Who are the customers

Since 2010 there is a trend according to which the majority of fintech companies are working to meet the needs of the business. At present, the share of such companies is 37% for small and medium businesses and large businesses.

The mass market of services for individuals has a share of 21% in the business activities of the companies, while the premium segment for private individuals is only 6%. But at the same time, no company in 2018 began to work in the field of business lending.

Business models

Today, revenue models are still dominated by one-time revenues – commission fees and revenues from licensing activities. At the same time, there is upward trend in the popularity of the transaction model, subscription (regular payments), freemium, etc.

Geography of locations

The lion’s share of Ukrainian fintech companies has head offices in Kyiv. Other popular cities include Dnipro, Odesa, Kharkiv, Rivne, and Lviv but regional fintech companies put together make less than 20% in total.

This distribution is primarily due to the fact that the capital has headquarters of large banks, the general centralization of business life in the capital, etc.

The survey was conducted in the form of an online survey among fintech companies and banks of Ukraine during the period from February to May 2019.