The year 2018 started off on a great note for the global FinTech community. In January 2018, FinTech startups across the globe collectively raised $2.56 billion in funding. The US heavily dominated the funding charts with $1.51 billion, which was a whopping 59% of the global FinTech funding in the first month of 2018. China was a distant second with a 9.8% ($252.4 million) contribution, with India and France contributing 4.7% ($121 million) and 4.2% ($106.8 million) respectively.

Investment platforms led the race with 20.28% contribution (worth $520.1 million) to the total funding in January. There were some large deals in this segment, with key players such as Cadre (raised $250 million), Wealthfront (raised $75 million), and Folio (raised $63.2 million) securing significant funding.

Several large banks were fairly keen on investing in startups from this segment. Visible Alpha, a US-based investment research technology firm raised $38 million from several investors, including large banks such as Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Santander, and BNP Paribas. Goldman Sachs, in particular, was a part of the three large funding deals in this segment (Cadre, Folio, and Visible Alpha).

Lending, following up with the 2017 trend, was neck-to-neck with investment platforms, with 20.17% in contributions worth $517.3 million. InsurTech, BankTech, and Big Data & Analytics were the other three key segments that garnered substantial interest from investors.

In the Big Data & Analytics space, C3IOT raised $100 million, Trifacta also raised $48 million. In the cryptocurrency space, Ledger Wallet raised $75 million, whereas the crypto-trading platform Uphold raised $57.5 million.

Similarly, in the InsurTech space, six companies raised more than $20 million, with US-based Precision Hawk raising the highest amount of funding ($75 million). In the Banking Tech space, Alkami Technology, Defi Solutions, and Ncino raised $70 million, $55 million, and $51.5 million, respectively.