The shift to digital banking and the corresponding rise of neobanks is arguably the biggest and most important trend to hit the banking world in the last 20+ years. Which is precisely why The Financial Brand is announcing the release of our brand new Digital Bank Database — powered by Nymbus. It is the first public database of neobanks, challenger banks, digital-only banks, direct banks, and fintechs offering direct-to-market solutions.
Do you work in the banking industry and want to keep track of the innovations challenger banks are rolling out? Do you run a fintech or neobank today and want to keep an eye on the competitive landscape? Are you a venture capitalist or investment banker who wants to evaluate the neobanking market? Then this directory is for you.
What’s in the Digital Bank Database?
The inaugural edition of the Digital Bank Database includes over 270 neobanks in a searchable, sortable online database. Each listing in the index includes nine separate datapoints:
- Company Name
- Website
- Financial Categories
- Target Audience
- Number of Customers
- Number of Employees
- Year Founded
- Continents Served
- Countries Served
- Location of Headquarters
- Description
Visit the Digital Bank Database
How Are Neobanks Categorized?
The Financial Brand classified every digital bank in one (or more) of the following six categories:
- Digital Banking – Providing the same (or similar) transactional functionality as a checking account, most frequently including a debit or credit card. Service intends to replace or compete with checking accounts offered by traditional banks and credit unions.
- Payments – Facilitating payments and/or money transfers between parties (e.g., Venmo, Zelle, PayPal). Until cryptocurrencies are more widely adopted as true payment mechanisms, they will not be included in the database.
- Lending – Offering loans and/or lines of credit, including mortgages, personal loans, student loans, auto loans, business loans, and the refinancing of such loans.
- Investments – Platforms that allow investors to trade equities, options, bonds and other standard retail investments, or services that help investors research and analyze such trades. Does not include currency, crypto or forex.
- Personal Financial Management (PFM) Tools – Facilitates the analysis of spending patterns, classifying/categorizing expenses, building budgets, and/or aggregating financial accounts from multiple third-parties.
- Financial Education – Tools that help consumers build their financial knowledge and/or skills. Includes credit repair, credit monitoring, counseling, and credit building services.
Over time, the number of categories and their respective definitions may change.
How to Update, Modify or Add a Neobank Listing
The Financial Brand’s team pulled the data included in our initial release from a range of sources, including LinkedIn, Crunchbase, press releases, and each organization’s website and their social media channels. Please keep in mind: we worked with what was publicly available, and tried our hardest.
Inevitably, some neobanks and fintechs may have been omitted. Why? There are a few that weren’t included due to language barriers; if we can’t determine what service(s) they provide (because, for instance, the entire site is in Chinese), we had to leave them off the list — at least for now. There are also many white-label fintechs with innovative solutions available to traditional financial institutions, but if the fintech isn’t directly targeting consumers or businesses with their own stand-alone platform, they aren’t listed. And then, of course, we probably simply missed a couple here and there.
Please Be Gentle:
The Financial Brand team did its very best to collect the most accurate and timely information that we could find. We realize that some information may be incorrect.
Submit or Update Listings
The Neobank Tracker will be an on-going “work in progress”. We plan to update often — at least once every calendar quarter, but perhaps more frequently. The Financial Brand reserves the right to verify any information submitted, and all submissions are subject to approval at our discretion.
Special acknowledgement goes to The Financial Brand’s Garret Reich for her hard work in pulling this database together, and to Nymbus for their sponsorship and support of this initiative.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions about how we might improve the Neobanker Tracker, please contact us.
Enjoy!