The fintech funding slowdown is officially a myth. In first quarter, both the money raised and the number of deals increased sequentially and year-over-year. In fact, Q1 was the biggest quarter in both number (334) and value ($6.7 billion) since we began tracking in mid-2014. And it was probably the biggest ever, since things really started heating up in 2014.*

The 334 fundings were double the volume of Q1 2015. It was 31% higher than Q4 2015 and 21% higher than Q3, the busiest quarter last year. Deal value was also up 110% over Q1 2015, 56% over Q4 2015, and 3% higher than Q3 2015.

Below is the breakdown for the past seven quarters as tracked by The Finovate Group (see Notes & Caveats below for our methodology). For a full list of fundings by week, go here.

The bigger question is what happens for the rest of 2016 and beyond? Given the funds flowing into VCs, the overall tech budgets of big financial institutions, and the rewiring of financial services via APIs, SDKs and alt-this and -that, there could be many more shiney quarters ahead.

———

Global Fintech Fundings by Quarter

2016    Value      Number
Q1      $6.7 bil        334

2015
Q4      $4.3 bil*     255
Q3      $6.5 bil       275
Q2      $4.7 bil       195
Q1      $3.2 bil        171
Total $18.7 bil     896
————————–
Avg/Q $4.7 bil     224

2014
Q4     $4.1 bil       210
Q3     $2.1 bil       191

* The value shown for Q4 2015, excludes the $6.1 billion raised in IPOs of Square, Worldpay and First Data

———–

Notes & Caveats:

1. There is no exact definition of what makes up a fintech company. We look for technology-oriented companies in the financial services arena, either providing services directly to consumers or selling technology to financial services companies. Our definition of financial services includes banking, investing, lending, trading, wealth management, insurance, cloud-based accounting for small business (SMB) and real estate. We also include any company that has appeared at Finovate or FinDEVr, because those companies are clearly targeting the financial services vertical.
2. We are primarily tracking VC Equity and Debt flowing to private companies, although we also track equity raised in IPOs and follow-on rounds of public companies.
3. We admit that our definition may not be exactly constant over time. It could be that at least some of the growth over time is that we have loosened our definition. It’s not intentional, but, hey, we love fintech and are always looking for companies to add to the list.
4. This list is not complete. We primarily use the databases at Crunchbase, Finovate, FT Partners, and WhoGotFunded to find fintech fundings. If the funding went unreported in those databases, we are unlikely to have it.

——
Image licensed from 123rf.com