Last holiday season, venture investors were pouring cash into high-flying startups—in particular, the hot fintech space—at a rapid pace. This year, the boom is over. VCs may be steeling themselves for a rockier funding environment in 2023, but they say they're excited for what's to come for fintech—and they're getting creative. "I felt like fintech became so overrun, almost, with investors in 2021, and now I think the tourists have [fled]," says Christina Melas-Kyriazi, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures.
VCs plowed a record $87.2 billion into fintech in 2021, over 140% higher than 2019, per PitchBook data. As the macroeconomic environment has soured in 2022, with interest rates skyrocketing and the economy teetering, VC deal value for fintech startups has fallen to $41.6 billion through the third quarter, down nearly 38% from 2021, per PitchBook. Meanwhile hot startups like Stripe competitor Checkout.com, which raised at a $40 billion valuation nearly a year ago, reportedly recently slashed its internal valuation to $11 billion.
The slowdown will likely stick, at least for a while. VCs were "right in seeing the long-term opportunity, but wrong in terms of how they valued" some fintech companies, says Jesse Wedler, a general partner at Google parent Alphabet's independent growth fund, CapitalG. "Even though it feels tough in fintech right now...the opportunity is so large and could dwarf most of software as these business models figure it out," says Wedler.
Top fintech investments for 2023
Fortune asked eight venture investors for their top predictions for fintech in 2023—which run the gamut from which type of fintech startup will be "in vogue" next year to when A.I. could start automating all sorts of fintech functions.
Christina Melas-Kyriazi and Sarah Hinkfuss, partners, Bain Capital Ventures
If you ask BCV's Sarah Hinkfuss, one area that is "totally under the radar" is commercial insurance. While it may not be what you think of when you think fintech, Hinkfuss predicts the space will be increasingly interesting for VCs like her.
"If your company is not working, the thing that you can't stop paying is your insurance policy, because once you stop paying that you cease to become a company." Commercial insurance has "always been" a "fascinating space," says Hinkfuss. She says we're seeing "really great innovation in delivering the insurance product at the time of consideration of purchase, and in particular, thinking about it from an embedded finance angle," she says. "How can financial products be served up by the platforms that are trusted by users, including in the commercial space?"
Hinkfuss's colleague Melas-Kyriazi, meanwhile, predicts tools that enable CFOs to be able to do their job "with higher accuracy and with less people are going to be in vogue, because there's a few things happening," one of which is "business models are changing, so there's more usage-based business models and it's getting more complex to know what your revenue and expenses are at any point in time, and you're facing downward pressure from the market. Maybe you need to cut headcount; you need to cut costs. So tools that help CFOs do that are going to...have even more tailwinds than they already have over the last few years."
Amit Kumar, partner, Accel
The trend for many fintechs like neobanks (think Current or Chime) seems to be going from a niche audience to catering to more general clientele. Take Current, which initially targeted teenagers with the aim of being a children's debit card but has since expanded into offering a wide variety of services for a slightly older crowd (including, recently, crypto trading).
But Amit Kumar, a partner at Accel, predicts that in contrast, "people being able to build more tailored financial products to you" is "100% where the future is headed."
"If you can build tailored financial products for me as a consumer, or me as a business,” he says, “I think there's a lot you can do with it." Kumar points to one of his portfolio companies, Coast, which builds payments software for commercial vehicle fleets, as an example. He argues that's a type of user or company that hasn't been catered to historically but has a "substantial" amount of payment volume.
The upshot is "increasingly, you're going to find that Americans are going to access financial products through platforms that they have closer affiliations to: If you're a construction worker or a construction company, you might have financial products sort of embedded within the construction software that you use, and it can be really clever," he believes.
Charles Birnbaum, partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
Unlike other investors who are wary of fintechs whose business models focus on lending (specifically, balance sheet lending, where the debt is kept on the lender's books), Charles Birnbaum, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, isn't scared off of them altogether. He does predict, however, that startups offering lending services will "grow more cautiously and focus much more on the contribution margin of their business—after you account for all the fraud, all the risk, and the cost of capital, which is clearly rising."
In fact, Birnbaum predicts, "You will see consumer fintechs be more forced to get into the world of unsecured consumer lending, kind of despite the macro headwinds, and…do it more carefully."
He also thinks we'll see lots of consolidation in fintech, both on the consumer and B2B (business to business) side, particularly in the second half of 2023. "A lot of business models had pretty thin margins on the consumer fintech side, and I think as people need to raise capital again, [and] as runways shorten in late ’23 and early ’24, there's just going to be a lot of consolidation in the space." Whether that's "incumbents buying these companies or companies just joining forces with complementary offerings, I think you're gonna see both—particularly on the consumer side."
One other prediction? The trend of neobanks and other fintechs launching crypto trading on their platforms will likely die down in the coming year. "I don't think people are going to retreat from offering that to customers," says Birnbaum, but for startups that didn't already "have it on their road map," they likely won't be adding it in 2023.
Jesse Wedler, general partner, and Sumi Das, partner, CapitalG
CapitalG partner Sumi Das isn't thinking small when it comes to his predictions: "I think the definition of a fintech company is going to change a ton," he opines. He argues the "old" way of thinking of it was, "All right, you're providing a banking service to a customer. That's a fintech company.” The new definition of a fintech company might be something totally unrelated to fintech: “I'm building a B2B marketplace that connects buyers and sellers, and as part of that I'm embedding financing into that platform, or I'm building a vertical software company for a niche market and then I'm going to add financial services, like a Toast would,” he says, pointing to restaurant point-of-sale and management system provider Toast. He believes it's those kinds of new fintech companies that will be the "most valuable."
His colleague Wedler, meanwhile, expects consumer fintech—those types of startups that target consumers and their money (think credit cards or neobanks)—will be "challenged" in 2023. What will be more popular with VCs over the next 12 months will be "the safer business models," like software selling to banks and other financial services providers, he predicts. "That's just a very easy-to-understand, software-type business model that's typically lower risk, lower burn."
Wedler also expects that despite the overall slump in valuations, high quality (or what he calls "above average") companies will still command top dollar—including in fintech. "There'll be no attractive valuations for those because everyone's so eager" to invest in them.
Laura Bock, partner, QED
According to QED partner Laura Bock, who focuses on U.S. fintech, founders shouldn't expect a much-improved funding environment for the next six to nine months—a warning echoed by most venture investors in some capacity right now.
But apart from a trickier time raising cash, Bock says she and her team are "inspired" by innovation coming out of Israel. She predicts, “We'll see more fintech winners emerging from that geography, following the footsteps of Payoneer, Melio, and Next.” Beyond Israel's borders, Bock expects there will be more B2B fintechs that provide “a back office ‘easy button’ for small and midsize businesses that are seeking automation and intelligence to optimize operations.” She believes there will be “more vertical solutions penetrating large legacy industries” like health care, logistics, construction, and real estate, to name a few, “with modern tooling as these businesses are looking to boost monetization and engagement."
Grace Isford, partner, Lux Capital
A.I. has increasingly been a topic inside and outside of VC circles over recent months—and it seems as though everyone from Twitter users to top venture investors can't stop talking about it. Grace Isford, a partner at Lux Capital, is no exception.
She predicts that “in 2023, we’ll see large language models penetrate fintech." Isford notes that "building upon existing [machine learning and A.I.] adoption, it will become table stakes for fintech companies to leverage large language models to process and prioritize claims, coordinate workflows, improve banking services, and bolster risk management for payments and underwriting."
