With only 87 active fintech companies, Austria’s fintech scene remains relatively small when compared with neighbors Germany and Switzerland. Nevertheless, the Austrian fintech industry has enjoyed increasing recognition over the past few years with numerous domestic fintech startups successfully expanding their business internationally and raising considerable rounds of venture capital.
The following are 12 fintech startups that are putting Austria on the global fintech map.
Cashpresso
Cashpresso, a product of Credi2 from Vienna, provides unsecured personal loans of up to EUR 1,500. The loan application is completely online with the know-your-customer (KYC) process done through a video call. The company claims to takes only 10 minutes from application to disbursement. The loan, if repaid in first 30 days, is interest-free.
The startup has raised US$7 million in funding so far from investors including Speedinvest, Hevella Beteiligungen and Reimann Investors.
Wikifolio
Wikifolio is a social trading platform that allows experienced investors to implement and publish their trading ideas and strategies in so-called wikifolios. Wikifolios are virtual portfolios and the trading in wikifolios takes place virtually.
Wikifolio traders can manage their wikifolios privately or publicly (“published”). Once they meet certain criteria, published wikifolios can become investable and thus form the basis for a wikifolio index certificate. Currently only wikifolios in German can become investable, thus form the basis for a wikifolio certificate.
Wikifolio has raised US$8 million in funding so far from Speedinvest, PostFinance, and Lang and Schwarz, among others.
DaoPay
DaoPay is a “pay by phone” payment system that enables online merchants of digital goods to bill charges and fees directly to the consumer’s mobile or home phone accounts.
Customers can pay for virtual goods and digital content by selecting DaoPay as their preferred payment method, then call/SMS the service number provided and the purchase is directly charged to the customer’s phone bill.
DaoPay has raised US$2 million from Techstars and ACE and Company.
Bsurance
Founded in 2017, Bsurance is an insurtech startup specialized in B2B2C business models. The startup develops and implements tailor-made insurance products directly into the sales channels of companies with a large customer base.
Key partners of Bsurance include UNIQA, Munich Re and AXA Partners. It has raised US$5 million in funding so far from Uniqa Ventures.
Finnest
Finnest provides a platform for established small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to get access to unsecured loans using crowdinvesting. The platform only accepts solid SMEs from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovakia and Croatia with a proven track record and more than EUR 10 million in annual revenues.
Finnest was acquired in March 2019 by Helsinki-headquartered equity-based crowdfunding company Invesdor. The two companies merged to offer a full stack of debt and equity services and investments across Northern Europe.
Bitpanda
Founded in 2014, Bitpanda, formerly Coinimal, is Vienna-based crypto startup that provides a brokerage platform for users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies and digital assets including bitcoin, ether, as well as digitized gold, in Europe. The startup claims 1 million users and more than 120 team members.
Bitpanda was granted a PSD2 payment service provider license by the Austrian financial market authority (FMA) in April. It raised EUR 43.6 million in an initial exchange offering (IEO) in August to fund its expansion plans beyond Europe.
Kompany
Founded in 2012, Kompany is a regtech startup that provides real-time access to official and audit-proof commercial register information, including company filings covering more than 110 million companies in 200+ jurisdictions. The startup helps businesses verify and check their international business partners, suppliers and customers via a webtool or automated via an API, reducing fraud risks, collection costs, third party risks and comply with international regulations, such as anti-money laundering rules.
Kompany is headquartered in Vienna and claims to be serving customers from over 100 countries. It has raised US$4 million in funding so far from IECT, Floor13 and AC & Friends.
Durchblicker
Durchblicker is a leading price comparison portal. Currently, Durchblicker offers 27 tariff comparisons for insurance, telecommunications, electricity and gas, as well as traditional financial products such as loans, checking accounts and savings accounts.
The startup is based in Vienna and employs more than 70 people.
Morpher
Founded in 2018, Morpher is a relatively young fintech startup that provides a trading platform that allows users to trade virtually any asset in the world with zero fees and “infinite liquidity.”
What makes Morpher distinctive is its decentralized nature. Morpher is built on the Ethereum blockchain, where it hosts its own ERC20 token which morphs/emulates the price action return of any market by employing smart contracts. Users stake Morpher tokens on a market’s performance. Subsequent gains are reflected by the smart-contract minting new tokens for the user, while losses destroy the token. This way, users can build up market exposure without having to go through banks, brokers, exchanges, ETF providers, or buying the underlying asset.
Morpher is backed by Tim Draper’s fund Draper Associates.
Digital Claim
Digital Claim is an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services provider serving the insurance industry. The company is the developer of a claim management technology designed to turn paper files into fully digitized claims.
The platform uses ML to efficiently create a claim database for clients and utilizes propriety claim management software to automate and optimize the claim recovery process.
Based in Vienna, Digital Claim claims to have processed over 3 million documents, and filed more than 500,000 claims, serving clients that include Generali, Union Reiseversicherung, HanseMerkur Versicherungsgruppe and Europäische Reiseversicherung.
PrimeCROWD
PrimeCROWD is Austria’s largest startup investors network, connecting more than 800 investors and 200 partners including European incubators, accelerators and venture capitalists, to promising European startups. PrimeCROWD’s startup portfolio covers fintech, cleantech, healthtech, IT and software, big data, and social impact, and the minimum investment amount is EUR 10,000.
Founded in 2015, PrimeCROWD has helped startups raised more than EUR 7 million in total.
Seasonax
Founded in 2014, Seasonax is a fintech startup headquartered in Vienna that specializes in financial market analytics. The company offers an analytics and charting app that allows financial professionals to identify and evaluate seasonal patterns for any asset-class. In addition, Seasonax users can examine intraday price patterns to improve timing and investigate event studies.
The Seasonax application is available on Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters and is based on Dimitri Speck’s unique seasonality algorithms, and aims to provide investors with sound statistical support for their investment and trading decisions.
