The Fintech that I currently use most often has to be Wealthsimple which operates in Canada and the United States, and offers the ability to invest to retail traders without trading fees (unless it involves a currency exchange to another country’s currency). This is my favorite Fintech platform because it makes the concept of investing more attainable to the average person who has no idea how to approach brokers and the stock exchange. To me, before this app, stocks felt a little bit exclusive from the average person because of the difficulty in doing so. Therefore, I think it will help the little guy to make and keep more of their money by allowing them to better invest into assets.
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My Favorite FinTech from the Philippines is GCash… It allows payments of bills, to bank transactions, and saves pretty much of your time, compared to the traditional ways of payments in the individual offices or malls.
Favourite Fintech: Line Pay
What are they doing:
A social messaging app-turned e-wallet solution in the predominantly cash-based Japan
Where are they active:
Primarily in Japan where Line app is used.
Why am I motivated/enthusiastic about them:
This will introduce cryptocurrencies to the mainstream in Japan by getting the younger generations to move away from fiat-based/cash payments to a digital future where most shops and restaurants would all accept digital payments because everybody, if not 99% of the population in Japan, uses Line app on a daily basis to connect with one another.
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Wave: They’re active in Africa where money is transferred on mobile phones. It has allowed me to send money from the US in a matter of seconds to those who need financial help following humanitarian trips. It’ the easiest, and I love if for that. It’s just a simple p2p payment app on my phone. Highly recommend it.
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bitpanda - PSD2 licensed neobroker from Austria
founded in 2014 with the goal to make investment easy for everyone
(crypto, metals-gold-silver-palladium-platinum, stocks, crypto-indices, ETFs, savings).
seven years later they have 500+ employees and 3 million customers in europe, offices in Vienna, Barcelona & Krakow (expanding).
my favourite because first user friendly platform in Austria, for me, it offers lots of benefits.
about us: “…one of the fastest growing fintechs in Europe. With a PSD2 payment service provider licence, state-of-the-art security and streamlined user experience, we make it possible for both first-time investors and seasoned experts to invest in what they believe in”
- easy to use & possible investment from €1
- professinal exchange also available: https://exchange.bitpanda.com
- authorized by the austrian FMA & french AMF
- deposit or withdraw EUR, CHF, GBP, USD & TRY
- incentives (BEST Token, VIP levels)
- bitpanda VISA card (pay with crypto + cashback)
- https://blog.bitpanda.com (EN, FR, ES, IT, PL, TR, DE)
- https://www.bitpanda.com/de/ueber-uns (german)
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Probably cashapp. It makes exchanging really easy and it’s super convenient.
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My favorite Fintech is Afterpay, which was started in Australia. It has now been acquired by Square, and I believe they are the highest valued fintech in Australia with a market cap of 39 Billion AUD. Afterpay mainly serves retail consumerism, enabling people to rather than pay full price up front for a product, spread the payment across four weeks in four equal installments.
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I started some years ago with the spanish FINTONIC which was the first company to provide bounded financial information from all your banks, insurances, etc. with the aim of saving money. Today they are kind of old fashioned, although they try to keep up with new services like an online bank account.
I also like Brik&People which allows small investors to invest in real estate projects. It’s very small project investing only in the city of Valencia, but the idea, the revenues, the general and detail info as well as the UX is great. But now my favorite is REVOLUT, it was a real game changer for me as it has helped to solve real problems I had with other members of my family who live in Germany and UK. It took us minutes what at a “traditional bank” was taking days and headaches (problem solving vs. problem making).
My favourite fintech when it comes to fiat is currently Zlantar. Their app shows you your income and expenses on all your bank accounts, cards ets available in Sweden. (Exactly what Tink used to do when they had an app.) I like getting an overview of all my funds without having to log into multiple apps and websites.
When it comes to crypto I have been using YouHodler to earn interest on the currencies I’m not actively trading. But I’m planning on moving to Hodlnaut for better rates and fees. They don’t support as many currencies as YouHodler yet though.
Strike
- Strike uses Bitcoin technology to offer instant payments globally at virtually no cost.
- They utilise the bitcoin layer 2 lightning network
- Currently the app is available in the USA and El Salvador
- Strikes API lightning infrustructure enabled El Salvador to implement a bitcoin standard
- This effectively makes traditional banks including challenger banks potentially obsolete
- Strikes API lightning infrustructure enabled El Salvador to implement a bitcoin standard
- Strike has also integrated their API into twitter allowing lightning payments between users
- Anyone on Twitter with a lightning wallet can make payments, however you require the strike app to sent up the receive functionality
- They my favourite finTech cause there is nothing I hate more then banks
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There’s 2 FinTech companies that have impressed me a lot over the last decade:
I have an old lust with TransferWise (now “Wise”).
Throughout my last 10 years of travelling, none have made it as simple as Wise to be grabbing new currency - and if I spend money and don’t have enough, a currency exchange is done and settled in the correct currency.
Before using it, it was always going to those expensive and clunky currency exchange shopfronts that do cash, and you’d have to hold onto the cash.
So when I got TransferWise, it was easy - and then it seems as if every time I checked back, they’ve added new features, like the card (and card freezing), and made processes simpler.
It got to a point where I was using Wise as my primary bank for business.
Acorns (now “Raiz” in Australia)
When I started investing, I wanted to continuously top up my trading account. At the time, Acorns was a brilliant idea and their pseudo-gamification of different strategy aggressiveness was fun.
And the ability to watch the value of your portfolio in real time was great.
It might not be so groundbreaking for the modern day, but these two products in my mind stick out as gamechangers.
My favourite Fintech is Celsius Network. I think that Alex Mashinsky has created an amazing company that has all the elements to be a financial behemoth. Unlike traditional Financial Institutions Celsius are driven by their external impact (putting economic freedom in the hands of the people) rather than their internal bottom line. Their goal is is to always act in the best interests of their community, which is almost unheard of today.
By giving back 80% of their revenue to their community that holds crypto on their platform, everyone in the Celsius community gets to participate in it’s success by receiving weekly yield on their assets with no fees whatsoever.
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My favorite fintech company in Switzerland is SwissBorg which is also a crypto. Through SwissBorg I was able to enter the crypto market easily by exchanging fiat quickly and with low fees. I felt part of the decision-making processes when given the chance to vote for the next tokens to be listed, I loved how the customer care quickly, kindly and precisely replied to my questions, I had a lot of fun by sharing invitation and getting my friends to join the community and I was able to gift to my brother some BTC for his birthday. When I got the chance to join the Premium Community I did not hesitate because not only could I support SwissBorg’s vision and development, I could also gain better yielding, it was a no brainer. I am amazed by the CHSB Buyback and by the Protect and Burn mechanism which put the community at the center and by how the in the app everything is continuously communicated transparently and simply making me feel included. I think SwissBorg is a perfect example of a fintech which put the consumer and the community at the core of their developments and this obviously disrupt totally the bank sector because they are bringing the wealth management to be understandable and accessible by everybody.
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My favourite Number 1 - BINANCE - the biggest and the best cryptocurrency exchange, with so many additional services and products, like Visa card, Binance Pay, Savings, etc. They are active in the most countries of the world with few exceptions. They are safe, reliable, offer a lot of services, app and desktop version are very user friendly, and they have the best customer support in the world 
I’m in the market for a home and browse Zillow in the US often.
Zillow helps you appreciate the market spatially by mapping comps in the area.
But what if…you could see mortgages on the map?
CrediFi’s doing just that. Not only is it cool data visualizations to see,
But I’m wondering what services can be built on top of their data aggregating platform…
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I don’t know if the Atomic wallet qualifies as a fintech, its been my favourite crypto app to manage my crypto and cash out. In my country in UAE the banks shut the door on buying cryptos so hence I can’t buy cryptos and fund my account on exchanges neither from my bank account or my credit card that is linked to my bank account. So the solution is I found a company locally that is licensed and would accept cash for crypto buying and selling. Hence, I was able to buy and sell and utilize my Atomic wallet to manage my funds on my app.
I’ll be honest and say that I dont have a favourite really, I got stung when I started in 2020 with problems with crypto.com crashing and staking (still have funds locked) with customer support not being very, well, supportive… so I took quite a while to dip my toe in again.
The space is crammed with apps now so it is difficult to pick between the promises without lots of research, which I have been more than happy doing with this course as part of that learning!
I have grown to use several platforms, trying various mechanisms with each, those I have used so far being:
Celcius - Trusted CEO in Tech, good interest on saving / lending crypto
Swissborg - On/Off ramp, popular coin staking and DEX for limited crypto range
Coti - Scalable fast payments network for fiat & crypto
Great low-down, love Swissborg, how clean & easy to use the app is in comparison to many others that are packed with busy features.
Agree, I know him from his VOIP days (not personally but playing with the tech back in the day, lol) which is why I was interested in learning more when I heard about it as I trusted his previous work and delivery.
The Celcius ethos and community is great, although I do always get a little nervous on big app updates, hahaha 
My favorite fintech company is Celsius Network. Celsius currently has headquarters in UK, US and Lithuania. Celsius became my favorite fintect since I saw this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZYRFrhzUdU&list=PLLjzjU2vvKVPKw-w8t41dBW700FtqfkJU. In addition, I watch a video where Alex Mashinsky explained how he wants to create Money Over IP (MOIP) just like he created Voce Over IP (VOIP).