Three fintech companies that are crushing!

By John Atkins

Financial technology (fintech) is one of the biggest industries on the planet. From San Francisco to Austin to London to Mumbai, fintech innovation is sprouting up everywhere. Mobile payments, lending, retirement planning, online banking, student debt solutions, and payment processing, to name a few, are being taken over by the fintech industry.

Some of the biggest companies like Facebook are even getting in on the fintech action. But you don't have to be Facebook big to dominate a fintech sector.

Here's the top 3 small fintech companies that are absolutely crushing it in their respected sectors.

#1: Honest Dollar

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

Number of Employees: 11 - 50

Funding Received: $3M

Honest Dollar is one of our favorite fintech companies, here at Self. We first heard about them during SXSW 2015 when they won the SXSW startup competition and now that we're based in downtown Austin, Texas, they're one of our neighbors.

Honest Dollar gives small businesses the opportunity to provide their employees with affordable retirement plans that can cost as little s $8 per employee.

Jason Henrichs, founder of Fintex —a member-driven organization working to expand Chicago’s role as a center of innovation in financial services and financial technology — believes that Honest Dollar is one of the top fintech companies in the country because they’re addressing such a big problem within the startup world that promotes itself.

“Anyone who has run a startup or small business knows that your people are your most important asset but doing things like setting up a 401k is both expensive and time-consuming,” says Henrich. “Honest Dollar is fixing the hurdles of setting up benefits and keeping them affordable so small businesses and their employees win.”

At Self, we couldn’t agree more!

#2: MX

Headquarters: Lehi, Utah

Number of Employees: 100 - 150

Funding Received: $50M

Millennials, twenty-somethings, generation y-ers, whatever title you prefer, have little to no interest in banking and it’s not because they’re not interested in money. It’s due to the current state of digital banking. If you’ve been on a major bank’s website or app within the last couple of years, then you’ve probably noticed at how limited in functionality and design it can be. With the exception of some mobile only and digital-minded banks, most banks are lacking in digital style, but it goes beyond just design.

Lucky for banks, there are third-party companies like MX popping up to help the financial services industry look and feel better about their external image and internal functionality.

“MX provides digital money management solutions to banks and credit unions who then provide those tools to their account holders for free,” says Alyssa Call, a media strategist at MX. Alyssa describes MX as being very similar to Mint.com, one of the more popular budgeting apps that is popular among millennials. “Our digital money management solutions allows users to aggregate all their accounts in one place, bringing their accounts and transactions all in one place, making it easier to manage budgets, debts, net worth, and goals within the platform.”

#3: Student Loan Hero

Headquarters: New York, NY

Employees: 1 - 10

Funding Received: $65K

You’ve seen the numbers, you know the cost, student loan debt is one the nation’s top problems that millions of Americans are facing, but do you know what resources are available to people with student loan debt?

One of the top resources is student loan hero, which is a web platform that provides support for organizing, managing and repaying student loans.

Freelance Community Outreach Specialist, Jaclyn Lambert, believes that Student Loan Hero is one of the top fintech startups because it’s giving students the resources to take control of their financial lives.

She says that Student Loan Hero was “started in 2012 under the idea that student loan borrowers were not equipped with the proper information to pay their debt off in an efficient manner.” It’s easy to use and free. Anyone can “upload their student loan information and [the platform] provides solutions as to how they can pay off their loans efficiently.”

There are obviously more than just three fintech companies that are doing really amazing things with their respected sectors, but these are the three that we really like, right now.

About the Author

John Atkins is the former community manager for Self.