Fintech Innovators, a community of fintech and insurtech innovators from Germany, Switzerland and Austria (DACH), has released its annual report featuring the most exciting and fastest-growing fintech and insurtech companies across the DACH region.

Produced in collaboration with robo-advisory platform Inno Invest, the 2023 Rising Stars Report showcases more than 70 fintech and insurtech newcomers in the region, highlighting their plans, successes and solutions.

Among these players, several startups are standing out from the crowd for having witnessed considerable growth and traction despite their young age. These ventures, which have been established less than three years ago, have already managed to ink partnerships with notable players and have all secured their first round of fundraising. These startups are now poised for growth, and should be watched closely this year onwards.

Debtist (Germany)

Founded in early 2023 and based in Germany, Debtist specializes in end-to-end receivables management, focusing on optimizing debt collection processes for businesses worldwide. The company provides a comprehensive suite of services, seamlessly integrating technology and best practices to ensure efficient workflows and smooth transitions.

Debtist relies on embedded technology to integrate its platform with subscription management, bookkeeping, and treasury management platforms, allowing for the seamless meshing with businesses’ established systems.

Debtist operates in Germany and France and is extending its services to German clients in Spain, the UK, Italy and beyond. The startup, which launched in May 2023, claims that it is doubling its number of customers and revenue on a monthly basis, and says it is currently rolling out its embedded solution with two leading European software companies to bring its offering directly to more than 50,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Debtist secured an undisclosed pre-Seed round of funding in October to enhance its product and enlarge its team.

Tapline (Germany)

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Berlin, Tapline develops an intelligent finance platform that enables software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to predict future cash flows and raise instant, non-dilute capital by trading their subscriptions as needed.

The funding platform allows for swift onboarding, providing clients with a proprietary tech-enabled credit score and a free financial dashboard to monitor various metrics of users’ businesses daily. It’s a one-stop shop for SaaS clients to run their business more efficiently through key free business metrics and access to liquidity.

Tapline is focused on business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) business models, especially in the DACH and fast-growth Central and Eastern Europe market. The platform can deploy capital in less than 48 hours after client onboarding, and companies with as little as EUR 8,000 monthly recurring revenue can trade up to 60% of their annual recurring revenue into instant, non-dilutive capital. It offers startups six or 12 months of upfront cash at a discount against the future value of their revenues. Funding of up to EUR 1 million is offered making this solution suitable not only for SaaS startups, but also for later growth stage like companies.

To date, Tapline says it has made EUR 100 million in SaaS finance requests and has accomplished 100% successful pilot trades.

Tapline raised EUR 31.7 million in a pre-Seed round in November 2022 to increase sales and marketing efforts, accelerate product development by hiring people for key product positions, and to tap into the exponentially growing SaaS market.

Pile (Germany)

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Berlin, Pile is a so-called “neo treasurer” that supports startups and venture capital (VC) firms in managing their capital and reducing financial risks. The company’s mission is to help startups find a secure place to invest their capital, independent of individual bank risks, and earn interest to extend their runway.

Pile’s product provides a way to diversify capital across multiple banking providers, from neobanks to traditional institutions, supporting customers in banking with various providers simultaneously while having an overview in one place. This gives founders and CFOs a real-time and accurate summary of their capital. Additionally, customers can choose between different interest-bearing deposit products, so they can extend their runway and let their money grow.

Pile, which went live just earlier this year, was founded by former Penta Founder Jessica Holzbach. The startup is backed by prominent fintech founders such as Max Tayenthal from N26, Carolin Gabor from Finleap, Luka Ivicevic from Index Health and Tuomas Toivonen from Holvi, and secured a EUR 2.8 million Seed round in June 2022.

Bling (Germany)

Founded in Berlin in 2021, Bling is a family fintech startup that delivers digital financial solutions for parents and their children. The company’s offering includes an allowance app and a payment card for children and young people. In the app for children, Bling provides financial tips, savings goals, and many other functions and content, teaching financial literacy. Depending on the age of the children, parents can decide for themselves how much trust and freedom is appropriate.

Bling also provides a banking offering for parents that’s designed to help adults manage and understand personal finances. These products include a payment card that works alongside the Bling platform, in addition to spending insights and analytics.

In addition, families on Bling can invest money sustainably starting at just EUR 1 a month.

Bling claims that tens of thousands of families are currently using its app, and says it plans to expand across Europe within the next two to three years. The startup secured “millions” in its Seed financing round in December 2022.

Bunch (Germany)

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Berlin, Bunch is building a platform to streamline processes to manage investment funds end-to-end and automate large parts of previously manual work. The company’s private market investing platform, the Bunch OS, is an asset and jurisdiction agnostic investment platform that allows investors to set up and manage their investment entities in a seamless way, while at the same time offering investors more professional tools.

The platform, which is currently in public beta, is designed to make investing in private markets easy, cost-efficient and fast, without compromising regulatory and tax compliance. It is a flexible and adaptable platform that works across legal structures, asset classes and jurisdictions to fully unlock private markets for everyone.

Bunch, which is currently available in Germany and the Netherlands, hopes to expand to the UK and Luxembourg within the next two to three years. The startup secured a EUR 7.3 million Seed funding round in July 2022 to expand across additional geographies and asset classes, and advance the technical and product development of its holistic software platform. Its backers include founders of European fintech companies like Adyen, Klarna, Juni, and Moonfare, as well as private market investment and fintech experts.

Yainvest (Switzerland)

Yainvest is a Swiss-based digital subsidiary established in 2022 by BhFS, a spin-off company of the universities of St. Gallen and Zurich. The company helps banks, fintech companies, and wealth and asset managers generate more investment returns for their clients with applied behavioral finance individual investor profiles.

Yainvest’s behavioral finance services are based on individual investor profiles, education, and optimal personalized investment strategy. The company also provides behavioral finance-based market signals for tactical asset allocation and transactional data analysis to detect investor biases. Its products enable  compliance with UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)’s Consumer Duty rules to serve retail investors applying behavioral finance for their best interest and also helps to do advanced measures of individuals’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards preferences and risk.

As a result of applying Yainvest’s solutions, investors stay invested longer, customers witness fewer withdrawals, and more clients are satisfied. The company claims its solutions help to increase investment performance by up to 3% a year.

Yainvest was one of the ten finalists of the 2023 Finance and Insurance industry vertical of the >>venture>> startup competition. The company, which currently operates in the US, the UK, DACH, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, is looking to consolidate its presence in the US and expand into Hong Kong and Singapore within the next two to three years.

Findustrial (Austria)

Founded in 2020, Findustrial is an Austrian provider of pay-per-use and as-a-service solutions. The company aims to create a digital ecosystem, streamlining the shift to so-called “equipment-as-a-service” models and offering flexible machinery financing solutions that make use of data analytics, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and blockchain technology.

Findustrial’s main services include the implementation of pay-per-use models and the provision of usage-based financing, which allows businesses to generate long-term revenue. These services primarily cater to the manufacturing industry, specifically manufacturers of machinery and equipment.

Findustrial has managed to sign some notable customers since its inception, including Trumpf Austria, Matsuura, RubbleMaster and GlenDimplex.

Findustrial, which currently operates in the DACH region, aims to expand to the UK and the US within the next three years, and hopes to breakeven in the next 18 months. The startup secured US$1 million in a Seed funding round in 2022, data from Dealroom show.

Featured image credit: Edited from Unsplash