After a tumultuous year 2020, fintech activity in Switzerland regained some of its strength in 2021.

Much of the focus was put on large established firms last year as investors pumped large sums of money to support their growth and expansion plans.

Several of them managed to launch overseas despite the uncertainty brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. In most cases, this followed a period of rapid growth as consumers and businesses were forced to move online.

For this list, we’ve looked at some of Switzerland’s fastest growing fintech startups to identify the players that are worth following this year. These 6 ventures have been expanding aggressively after witnessing notable traction and getting financial backing from prominent investors.

Tradeplus24

Tradeplus24, a provider of flexible funding to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), started expanding dynamically overseas in 2020 and raising several hundred million of debt since then.

Tradeplus24 started with launching in Australia in late-2020, a launch that was further bolstered by joining the Australian Finance Group (AFG)’s panel of finance providers as its only fintech partner to offer its flexible credit line product.

In 2021, Tradeplus24 continued to pursue its global ambition, starting rolling out in the UK and the Netherlands in the beginning of the year as well as venturing into larger ticket transactions.

Driving the future of data-driven lending, Tradeplus24 has built core competencies in maximizing insights from collateral management in its existing markets. To further drive global expansion, the company will start offering its solution as a service (asset-backed lending-as-a-service) and expects to add further value by deploying new products in the B2B lending space.

Tradeplus24 is a Zurich-founded company launched in 2016. It currently offers SME loans across four markets using only accounts receivables as security. Receivables from almost all countries can be used as collateral.

Sygnum

Sygnum, a digital asset specialist that helps institutional and private qualified investors, corporates, banks and other financial institutions invest in the digital asset economy, closed a massive US$90 million Series B funding round in January 2022.

The new funding came on the heels of a solid trading year, which delivered a tenfold year-on-year increase in consolidated gross revenues, the company said. In the same period, its client base neared 1,000 financial institutions, banks, corporates and private investors, while its assets under administration grew to over US$2 billion.

The fundraising, which valued Sygnum at US$800 million post-money, will be used to create new decentralized finance (DeFi) offerings and expand its Singapore operations, the company said, hinting at an exciting year ahead for Sygnum.

Sygnum, which holds a Swiss banking license and a Singapore asset management license, has a portfolio of regulated digital asset banking services that comprises digital asset accounts and custody, brokerage, tokenization solutions, asset management, lending and business-to-business (B2B) banking services.

SEBA Bank

Like Sygnum, SEBA Bank is a licensed digital assets banking platform in Switzerland that supports professional individuals and companies as well as institutional clients with investing, custodian, trading and lending.

The company offers a fully universal suite of regulated banking services in the emerging digital economy, including business accounts and custody services.

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Zug, SEBA Bank has been on an expansion spree over the past few years. Recently, it closed a CHF 110 million Series C funding round to accelerate the growth it had achieved over the prior year, and fuel its expansion plans in APAC and the Middle East.

SEBA Bank is currently supporting over 25 markets globally, having strengthened its presence in APAC earlier this year by appointing an APAC CEO to solidify its presence in Hong Kong and Singapore, along with other priority markets in the Middle East including the launch of a dedicated office in Abu Dhabi.

Amnis Treasury Services

Amnis Treasury Services, an international payment specialist, started expanding across Europe after receiving a license from Financial Market Authority Liechtenstein in late 2021.

The company, which claims more than 2,000 customers in Switzerland and says it has witnessed strong growth over the past year, unveiled new offices in Vienna and Prague in December 2021, marking its official entry into the European Union (EU).

The focus in the company’s initial phase of expansion will be on Central and Eastern Europe, with business activities having already been rolled out in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Italy.

Amnis Treasury Services provides SMEs with cross-border payments and currency services. In addition to traditional payment methods, the company also offers the option of making cross-border, real-time payments around the clock to suppliers within a client’s own PEER network.

Amnis Treasury Services plans to launch IBAN accounts for customers in the near future.

Imburse

Imburse, a global payment integration middleware, is looking to hire for up to 30 new roles across its primary locations in London, Zurich and Lisbon by mid 2022 to support the “rapid growth trajectory” it has been on.

The hiring blitz comes on a back of a US$12 million capital injection it received from Accenture back in June 2021, a partnership that also saw Imburse joining Accenture Ventures’ Project Spotlight, an engagement and investment program aimed at connecting startups with the world’s largest public companies.

Founded in Zurich in 2018, Imburse works with global insurers, banks, and other large companies, allowing them to quickly and seamlessly connect to any payment provider or payment technology, anywhere in the world, for both collections and pay-outs.

Imburse’s marketplace provides a single platform for businesses to access the payment ecosystem, making it easy, fast and inexpensive to deploy new technologies.

Yokoy

Swiss spend management specialist Yokoy has been working on expanding deeper into the US, Europe and more regions across the globe after closing a US26 million Series A funding round in October 2021.

The company, which was founded just two years ago, has already attracted a clientele of more than 400 midsize and enterprise customers worldwide including DPD Group, Stadler Rail, Russia’s Sberbankm and Swiss bank Swissquote, and over 80,000 end-users. It has five global offices, and employs nearly 100 people.

Yokoy provides a platform that automates spend management with artificial intelligence. It combines expense management, supplier invoice management and corporate credit cards into one single intuitive tool, helping customers cut costs, save time and bring clarity to their spending.

Recently, Yokoy teamed up with Visa to launch a new debit card. Designed for all commerce-related expenses, the Yokoy Visa Business Card is available as both a physical card and a virtual product. It can be used worldwide and attracts no card fees, card account fees, transaction fees or foreign currency surcharges when used within the EU.

The company also partnered with UBS to allow UBS credit card bookings to be managed easily through the Yokoy app. In the future, UBS customers will also benefit from exclusive card management features.

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