Hey fintech friends,

Fintechs closed out 2024 with a total $28.62 billion in equity funding for the year– up from $28.58 billion in 2023– and companies show no signs of slowing down. Last quarter brought regulatory developments that could transform BNPL and earned wage access (EWA) solutions, an acceleration in traditional financial institutions’ adoption of tokenized assets & CBDCs, and a continued surge in AI innovations. We also saw the EU's landmark Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation take effect for crypto-asset platforms in Europe and, in the US, heightened debate around how BaaS models should be regulated following Synapse's collapse.

Against this backdrop, Q4 capped off an eventful year of funding breakthroughs, market shakeups, and evolving partnerships between fintech players and traditional banks. Let's dive into fintech activity in Q4 and the most significant trends shaping fintech going into 2025.

For new readers, Signals is the premium subscriber edition of TWIF designed to get you away from the headlines and to explore the larger trendlines. Each quarter, we break down four key questions on fintech activity:

1. Which concepts are getting funded? 
2. Where are exits, M&A, and SPACs concentrated? 
3. Which firms are raising debt and venture funds for fintech? 
4. Which products were launched over the last quarter? 

If you haven’t already, subscribe to future editions here!

Overall activity

Fintechs raised a total of $8.04 billion in Q4, up 29% from the prior quarter and up 12% Year-over-Year. The number of rounds raised was down 2% QoQ (⬆️3% YoY), and on average, equity raises grew in size by 24% in size QoQ (⬆️4% YoY).