- Europe’s newly-minted fintech unicorns racked up 8.6m Android app downloads in 2021, new data shows.
- App Radar data points to a 33% year-on-year increase in demand for fintech unicorn apps.
- Austrian crypto startup BitPanda recorded the highest growth in downloads, rising 470% to 754,000.
Europe’s newly-minted fintechs secured a rapid rise in app downloads last year as consumer demand for crypto, investing, and banking apps soared.
A total of 14 fintech unicorns were born on the continent in 2021, acquiring 8.6 million new customers combined in the process, according to new data from App Radar based on downloads from the Google Play Store. The region’s startups that surpassed a $1 billion valuation in 2021 recorded a 33% increase in Android app downloads in the 11 months to the end of November.
Austrian crypto startup BitPanda posted the biggest percentage increase with downloads growing from 132,000 to 754,000, an increase of almost 470%. German online broker Trade Republic racked up 1.3 million new users, a 138% jump, as it reached unicorn status during its $900 million Series C in May. Elsewhere, French employee benefits startup Swile grew 94% with 156,000 new users.
The surge in app downloads tallies with the immense growth in VC investment into startups in Europe. Around $116 billion was invested into the region’s startups last year with fintech securing the largest proportion of fresh funds but crypto investment startups stole the limelight in terms of customer downloads.
Investors have piled into crypto and wealth tech companies in recent years with platforms like London’s blockchain.com, which became a unicorn in February 2021, landing by 3.1 million Android app downloads by the end of the year.
It’s a different picture for
fintech startups
that sell to other businesses, where the number of customers needed to be a unicorn is remarkably low. For example, London-based insurance startup Marshmallow, which became a unicorn in September 2021, had around 19,000 downloads at the time but doubled that by the end of the year. Similarly, Danish payroll company Pleo doubled its app downloads to 71,000.
“When you look at the customer base of each 2021 fintech unicorn you can see how much higher the bar is for consumer-facing apps versus ones that predominantly cater to businesses,” Thomas Kriebernegg, managing director and cofounder of App Radar, said.
“In most cases, you need around 1 million downloads on Android which would likely translate into at least 2 million users when you include other platforms. However, for mostly B2B apps low hundreds of thousands, and in some cases even tens of thousands, seems to be more than enough for the market at the moment.”
Kriebernegg added that consumer-facing apps may be expected to raise more money than their B2B peers because “they need to capture a much larger customer base.” The App Radar cofounder said there was “little connection” between money raised and how many users an app has.
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