Global insights

H2’24 sees drop in global fintech investment, but uptick in Q4’24 sparks optimism

While global fintech investment fell from $51.7 billion in H1’24 to $43.9 billion in H2’24, the quarterly results provided a sense of positivity heading into 2025, with investment growing from $18.0 billion in Q3’24 to $25.9 billion in Q4’24. A similar trend occurred in both the Americas and EMEA regions; the Americas saw $31 billion in fintech investment in H2’24 — of which $20.2 billion came in Q4’24, while EMEA attracted $7.3 billion in H2’24 — of which $4 billion came in Q4’24.  Meanwhile, investment in the ASPAC region dipped slightly from $5.8 billion to $5.5 billion between H1’24 and H2’24. 

Payments sector remains fintech superstar

After falling to $17.2 billion in 2023, global investment in the payments space increased to $31 billion in 2024. While the largest deal of the year came in H1’24 (Worldpay - $12.5 billion), H2’24 saw solid deals in all regions, including the $6.3 billion buyout of Canada-based Nuvei, the $1.6 billion buyout of US-based Transact Campus, a $788 million raise by Philippines-based Mynt, the $385 million acquisition of UAE-based NeoPay, a $309 million raise by Argentina-based Ualá, and a $267 million raise by UK-based Zepz. The broad applicability and growth potential of payments solutions — and the ongoing expansion of the space into areas like B2B payments — is expected to keep investor interest hot well into 2025.

Dry exit environment keeping investors cautious

After falling to a seven-year low of $28.5 billion in 2023, global exit deal value for fintechs picked up slightly in 2024 to $37.3 billion, even as the volume of exits fell for the third straight year — from 399 deals to 367 deals. Despite the small pickup, the exit environment remained incredibly soft, continuing a trend seen in the wake of the outlier years of 2020 and 2021, when exit values surged from $48.3 billion in 2019 to $104.7 billion in 2020, and then to $395.2 billion in 2021. The lack of sustained exits, combined with ongoing market uncertainty and concerns about valuations and potential down rounds, likely kept many fintech investors on the fence in 2024. It likely also contributed to the increasing interest in continuation funds and the use of secondary transactions to provide liquidity.

M&A deal value falters year-over-year, but Q4’24 results positive

Global M&A activity fell from $60.2 billion to $49.6 billion between 2023 and 2024 as large M&A transactions remained in short supply. While M&A deal value dropped from $28.1 billion to $21.6 billion between H1’24 and H2’24, deal value nearly doubled from $7.4 billion to $14.2 billion between Q3’24 and Q4’24; with interest rates coming down and the uncertainty related to various elections now calming, the end-of-year uptick bodes well for the M&A market heading into 2025. PE investment also declined significantly, falling from $10.5 billion in 2023 to just $2.55 billion in 2024, while VC investment dropped more modestly, from $49.1 billion to $43.4 billion.

Crypto sees new wave of investment

Global investment in digital assets and currencies rose from $8.7 billion in 2023 to $9.1 billion in 2024; four of the five largest crypto deals of 2024 occurred in H2’24, including the $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge by Stripe and VC raises by Praxis ($525 million), Blockstream ($210 million), and Current ($200 million). H2’24 also saw mBridge announce that it had reached minimal viable product stage; the project is a collaboration between organizations and central banks primarily in the ASPAC region and Middle East to develop a single platform for cross border transactions of multiple CBDCs.¹ Stablecoins also saw growing interest in 2024, with US-based Ripple launching its RLUSD during H2’24.²

Real economy corporates continuing to invest in financial services

Corporate VC-participating investment globally dropped from $26.9 billion in 2023 to $19.6 billion in 2024. Both the Americas and ASPAC saw considerable declines in CVC investment, while EMEA saw a small rise year-over-year. Investment from financial institutions was particularly slow, in part because of their ongoing struggle to understand and leverage the economics of fintech businesses. Real economy corporates however continued to invest in a wide range of fintech solutions, both to extend their products and services to customers and to capture more of their value chain —particularly on the e-commerce front.