A new fintech world is upon us amid funding drought, lower valuations

Fintech valuations have come crashing down and conditions are ripe for a spate of buyouts

In January, Visa’s chief executive officer, Al Kelly, said during an earnings call that “there’s been a burst of the balloon in valuations in the fintech world”. Noting that the trend of lower valuations “is a helpful characteristic of the current environment”, he added: “We will look for capabilities and management teams that will bring more value to Visa than we can bring ourselves.”

Data from KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech H2’22 shows that global fintech investment — via mergers and acquisitions (M&As), private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms — at $164.1 billion in 2022, was down 31 per