Fintech Startup Failures

The Indian digital insurance unicorn reached $1.1B on embedded policies and found the economics impossible

Dominican Y Combinator fintech dismantled by a regulator after onboarding 11,000 investors without a license.

Forty percent of Tuza Finance's loan book in hospitality turned Rwanda's tourism slump into a death sentence.

Egypt's first social payment app raised $20M then ran into CBE regulation and currency controls it couldn't survive

Digital mortgage raised $1B+, processed $25B in COVID-era refinancing, hired 10,000 employees — then 2022 mortgage rates hit 7%, refinancing collapsed 80%, 9,000 employees were fired, SPAC valued at $7.7B went public at $5/share

UAE's scrappy BNPL player was outgunned by better-funded rivals and rising rates.

The cloud-native core banking platform hit by a funding crunch and deep restructuring after a $2.7B valuation

A $200M acquisition fell apart over 8% bad loans — then nothing was left.

The AI insurer that discovered that even robot underwriters can't escape actuarial math.

The $8.5B cap table management platform that lost enterprise clients after a data misuse scandal revealed a rep had used client equity data to solicit competing investors

Mexico's underbanked credit card neobank survived COVID but not rising interest rates and 18% delinquency.

Grab's digital bank dream burned SGD 300M chasing customers it already had in its app.

Sharia-compliant digital banking for global Muslims — a real market need that couldn't find enough customers fast enough.

Open banking infrastructure that built the rails but couldn't get enterprise trains to run on time.

The $5.7B SPAC neo-bank that became a 97% stock collapse cautionary tale.

Southeast Asian corporate card that spent $1,800 acquiring customers worth only $900 annually.

$530M raised. Sold to Entrust. Price undisclosed — and that says everything.

Germany's premium digital wealth manager ran out of wealthy believers.

India's largest-ever IPO became its most spectacular first-day crash then lost its banking license

Bitcoin rewards card that proved crypto enthusiasm doesn't survive a bear market.

Refinancing your debt was a great idea until the regulators and inflation hit at once.

Europe's BaaS darling discovered that regulators care more about AML than growth metrics.

Argentina's card issuing infrastructure startup strangled by the BCRA's fintech restrictions

Corporate card unicorn-hopeful drowned in a sea of identical competitors.

UK neobank for migrants and the underbanked raised £130M over 9 years. Couldn't reach profitability. Shut down September 2024.

Backed by UK's biggest banks, Bink still couldn't buy customer loyalty.

The Philippines' first digital bank raised $131M and found Southeast Asian neobank economics nearly impossible

B2B BNPL for inventory purchases collapsed when e-commerce brands stopped paying back.

Zero fees sound great until you discover workers won't switch their direct deposit for you.

Costa Rican lending app survived COVID only to be destroyed by inflation and a regulatory probe.

Europe's KYC champion swallowed by the automation wave it helped create.

India's BNPL pioneer — Walmart tried to acquire it, then walked away, then it shut

Australian expense card startup crushed by global giants entering its home market.

Fee-free B2B payments promised blockchain disruption but burned cash before breaking even.

Fourteen years and $80M couldn't turn mobile top-ups into a viable super-app.

Splitting rent with borrowed money works until interest rates double your cost of capital.

The Indonesian BNPL pioneer raised $270M but couldn't escape high default rates in underbanked markets

The UK SME lender that raised £200M+ but couldn't escape rising bad debt in the post-COVID reckoning

100,000 users, £3M revenue, and zero path to profitability — UK's freelancer neobank ran out of road in 2024.

Egypt's wage-access startup ran out of cash as corporate clients froze all new spending.

Supply chain finance for Colombian importers. Trade finance unit economics broke in 2023.

Built the future of SME banking — then got stuck in endless bank pilot purgatory.

The crypto trading and yield platform that reached a $3 billion valuation with Temasek and Tiger Global backing — then sold its consumer-facing business WhaleFin for $30 million during the 2022 bear market implosion

Japan's messaging giant burned billions to lose the payments war to SoftBank's PayPay.

The fintech startup that called itself the NASDAQ for recurring revenue — then saw both co-CEOs fired amid misconduct allegations within weeks of each other

SMB invoice lender collapsed when credit markets tightened and charge-offs spiked.

India's POS hardware giant that UPI rendered obsolete while investors watched $76M evaporate.

Argentina's challenger bank unicorn that hit $2.5B — and shed 15% of staff when regulators blocked its banking licence

Validus's Vietnam SME lending bet lost to NPLs, regulatory fog, and local funding gaps.

Built banking infrastructure for Latino SMBs — then got crushed by the BaaS compliance cost explosion.

Mexico's early neobank pioneer squeezed out as Nu and BBVA Digital scaled past it

Africa-Asia remittance pioneer collapsed after founders' assault scandal scared off investors.

Egypt's currency crisis turned Halan's microfinance book into unrecoverable losses.

Oxxo's digital wallet. 3M users. Shut down by its own parent.

A $47M corporate card startup acqui-hired for pennies when Brex and Ramp copied every feature it built.

Raised $52M to voice-enable banking, collapsed under lawsuits and enterprise sales cycles.

Ghana's 54% cedi crash in 2022 turned a promising BNPL into an unrecoverable debt spiral.

Pan-African payments giant Cellulant quietly collapsed after TPG refused a lifeline.

Turkey's original neobank was killed by its parent after 85% inflation made the numbers impossible.

Open banking pioneer that banked on pilots but never closed the real deals.

The Nigerian neobank raised $55M at $500M and was forced into a devastating down round as Nigeria's economy collapsed

Sweden's fintech infrastructure builder couldn't build enough revenue to survive the funding winter.

Medellín-based SME fintech lender backed by Omidyar Network and IFC raised $15M across nine years—then shut down in 2023 as Colombian SME default rates and rising Banco de la República rates destroyed lending margins.

A cross-border payments darling that couldn't survive tightening rules and IPO rejection.

Vietnam's data localization laws killed Credify's open finance dream before it launched.

When M-Pesa launched its own savings product, Akiba Digital had nowhere left to hide.

Emerging market invoice finance melted down when defaults surged and regulators closed doors.

China's largest P2P lender. Regulators eliminated P2P. -95% from peak.

100 clients couldn't save finleap connect when the API aggregation market turned into a commodity war.

Canada's home-reno lender couldn't survive rising rates and rising defaults.

UK's SME online lender cut deep as rising rates and SMB stress eroded its growth narrative

The Indian neobank for blue-collar workers raised $100M but couldn't survive the PhonePe and Paytm onslaught

Behavioral savings science couldn't compete when free apps absorbed the same market.

Backed by $105M, Oriente couldn't survive bad loans and Manila's regulatory crackdown.

Fintech lending darling raised $600M to serve middle-market credit — then learned that middle-market credit is hard for good reasons

The fintech startup that invented revenue-based financing for e-commerce and raised $2 billion in AUM — then watched rising interest rates compress its margins to zero

The payment platform that let businesses pay any invoice with a credit card — then filed for Chapter 11 as interest rate rises made the arbitrage impossible

Cross-border payments for Africa at $2.2B. FTX invested. SVB collapsed. The valuation did too.

Mexico's Square-clone unicorn cut 75% of staff as its $2B valuation became a cautionary tale

Brazil's LatAm payments unicorn gutted by US sanctions risk and mass layoffs after a $3B peak valuation

India's AI-first bank met regulatory reality and quietly disappeared.

The UK remittance fintech that raised $165M to challenge Wise — and cut 30% of staff as competition erased its pricing advantage

The Argentine crypto wallet that reached 2M users, raised 16M dollars, and shut operations in 2023 after regulatory pressure made the business model untenable.

UK's rental deposit lending startup shut down as FCA scrutiny and thin margins made the product commercially unviable

The bank for every fintech — undone by compliance it couldn't manage

Blockchain B2B payments pioneer ran out of runway when SMBs stopped paying.

A decade of financial comparison in LatAm ended when banks cut referral fees.

The BNPL startup that discovered being third in a winner-takes-most market is fatal.

Uganda capped digital lending rates at 6% — KangaCash was charging 20% and had no path to compliance.

Argentina's BNPL startup raised $26M to lend in a country with 100%+ inflation — and discovered the model doesn't survive it

The African mobile lending infrastructure raised $120M and discovered that lending to the mobile-first poor never scales profitably

The bank that built the real-time crypto payments backbone self-liquidated in 72 hours after the FTX contagion consumed its deposit base.

One-click checkout for the open web. The CEO who said checkout could be bigger than Amazon. Then the board sued him.

Colombia's BNPL unicorn hit by rising rates and credit losses, cutting deeply to survive

São Paulo fintech offering green credit lines to Brazilian SMEs raised R$60M before shutting down in 2023 as SME default rates hit 15%+ and the Selic rate made their cost of capital unprofitable.

Mexico's fintech unicorn targeting the unbanked credit card market ran into the limits of thin margins and high defaults

The SoftBank-backed African crypto exchange cut 35% of staff as crypto winter wiped its core markets

The Singapore embedded finance unicorn reached $1B then filed for judicial management after missing payroll

Blockchain climate certificates—innovative, unrecognized, and ultimately worthless.

Argentina's neobank killed by the economy it was trying to fix.

Payroll-linked loans worked in the UK but drowned in US complexity.

Colombian mobile wallet and neobank reached 3M registered users before selling to Banco W in a distressed deal in 2023 as the cost of serving unbanked Colombians proved impossible to recover from interchange revenue alone.

Ecuador's first unicorn raised $84M from SoftBank to be the Stripe of Latin America—then cut 60% of its workforce in 2023 as the LatAm fintech funding winter arrived.

Lithia's $235M bet on captive auto lending imploded when subprime borrowers defaulted en masse.

Germany's neobank lost the race to N26 and Revolut and quietly retreated

Chilean credit-scoring and financial wellness startup backed by Accion and IGNIA ran for ten years before shutting down its consumer product in 2023 as open banking regulation eliminated the data advantage it had spent a decade building.

UK's all-cards-in-one fintech went into administration and was rescued at a fraction of its $250M valuation

Indonesia's buy-now-pay-later champion couldn't export its model to Vietnam's credit desert.

The crypto-friendly bank that died three days after SVB, taken by FDIC in the night

Córdoba consumer digital lending raised $600K — Argentine inflation 140%+ eroded peso margins simultaneously with BCRA rate cap Communication A 7750 eliminating fintech lending economics

A CAD $210M bet on embedded benefits collapsed under a $4M monthly burn rate.

Nigeria's retail investing app got regulated out of existence before going viral.

Built a PSD2 aggregator in a market where Visa just spent $2 billion on the competition.

The banking-as-a-service platform that survived its own collapse through a distressed sale

Crypto winter killed a third of Veriff's workforce in one brutal January day.

Sweden's subscription-cancel startup couldn't cancel its own death spiral.

The AI money coach that raised $140M on viral TikTok growth — and discovered that users who can't save money also can't pay subscription fees

The bank that built the real-time settlement network for every major crypto exchange — then watched them all collapse simultaneously in 2022 and trigger a fatal bank run

The Southeast Asian BNPL startup raised $40M then shut down as rising rates made the model unworkable

iCount lost its regulatory race to licensed challengers and was swept up by Israel's war economy.

The Mexican SME lending unicorn backed by Goldman Sachs reached $1.3B and then credit losses crushed it

The bank for startups. $42B withdrawal requests in 24 hours. FDIC seized in 48.

The LatAm B2B fintech raised $180M at $2.1B offering corporate cards to startups and got crushed when startups died

SoftBank's $100M bet on free financial wellness met a CFPB enforcement order.

Australian BNPL that raised £63M to conquer the UK market announced it was ceasing all UK and Irish operations in January 2023 as BNPL economics collapsed across the sector.

Vietnam's app-lending crackdown killed CashWagon's core market overnight.

Made filing taxes easy. Forgot to make the business sustainable.

$97M in embedded finance fuel burned on global expansion before the engine was ready.

Kakao's brokerage arm sank under insider trading scandal and regulatory wrath.

Colombia's BNPL unicorn. Rising rates compressed the model.

Denmark's $4.7B spend management unicorn cut 15% of staff as the SMB fintech winter hit hard

Vietnam's regulatory vacuum killed Funding Societies' four-year lending expansion.

Mexico's Y Combinator neobank that couldn't survive Nubank's arrival on its home turf.

Walmart couldn't save a financial wellness app that employees wouldn't use.

The UK digital mortgage broker that raised £64M but couldn't survive rising interest rates

Dubai's robo-advisor ran out of runway when regional markets turned hostile.

The Mexican revenue-based financing startup raised $35M for e-commerce brands but the e-commerce crash wiped the portfolio

The payments infrastructure startup raised $150M to compete with Stripe and found that impossible

The SME lending dream crushed by Brazil's interest rate spike.

Mexico's leading payments unicorn raised $250M at $2B but couldn't withstand Mercado Pago's zero-commission assault

Sweden's freelancer accounting app had 20,000 users but couldn't find 20,000 reasons to pay.

The London startup that built real-time payment rails on open banking APIs — then shut down in September 2023 when its Series C round fell through and 130 employees were let go overnight

Uganda's boda-boda lender fled to the Philippines when fuel costs tanked rider incomes.

The startup tax credit platform backed by a16z that automated billions in SMB claims then quietly closed

Brazilian P2P lending fintech connecting retail investors with SME borrowers in Minas Gerais shut down in 2023 as the Selic rate at 13.75% made P2P lending structurally uncompetitive against fixed income.

A $60M small-business neobank that vanished overnight, leaving thousands of customers locked out.

UK SME challenger bank raised £21M, won FCA authorisation, and quietly shut down without ever achieving commercial scale.

First fintech startup to win a US national bank charter — then burned $100M per year trying to use it

Australian digital mortgage broker. Rising rates killed the market. Shut down.

A SPAC-fueled neobank for Latinos that burned $30M trying to crack a market it misunderstood.

The German loan comparison pioneer displaced by rising rates and fintech rivals it helped inspire

The RBI-backed invoice discounting platform killed by adoption inertia in a winner-take-most market.

Mexico's BNPL pioneer drowned in defaults and regulatory pressure simultaneously.

Another freelancer neobank that couldn't stand out in a crowded field of better-funded rivals.

India's salary-advance pioneer drowned in NPAs and regulatory compliance costs.

White-label payment infrastructure. Funding dried up in the 2022 crunch.

Norwegian bill-payment and mobile banking app raised €18M across a decade but could not find sustainable unit economics in a market dominated by banks that replicated its features for free.

São Paulo startup that digitised the city's street parking voucher system, raised $30M, and built a 1M+ user base — lost its core business when the City of São Paulo awarded the parking concession renewal to a competitor.

Employee benefits fintech. Co-founder exit killed the enterprise pipeline.

Turkey's lira freefall in 2021 wiped out Credy's entire loan book overnight.

Estonia's startup equity trading platform lost its retail investor model to MiFID II compliance costs and liquidity collapse

Chilean fintech offering payroll-linked credit to underbanked workers — wound down in 2022 when credit losses outpaced the growth needed to cover the risk model's fixed costs.

Embedded payments startup sold to Worldpay at half its valuation after Stripe Connect ate its lunch.

Colombia's social selling fintech trained 300,000 women to sell financial products — and couldn't turn that into a sustainable business.

Online mortgage at $7.7B SPAC. CEO fired 900 employees on Zoom. SPAC closed at $750M in 2023.

Mexico's P2P lending pioneer was killed by the very regulation it helped create.

Outgunned by a rival with 10x the capital, Hastee was acqui-hired into oblivion.

UK P2P SMB lender IPO'd at £1.5B — stock fell 90%+ as default rates rose and the model broke

Russia's Silicon Valley ambition: $800M of Western VC trust, torched in one season.

RBI's digital lending crackdown turned a compliant fintech into an instant outlaw.

Brazilian parking payment app. 1M users. City-controlled competition ended it.

Modular banking platform that couldn't escape the gravitational pull of endless enterprise customization.

Neobank for Argentina. Hyperinflation and FX controls broke the model.

Vietnam's Operation Clean Money put FastCash executives in handcuffs.

Telr built a regional payments pioneer but Stripe and Checkout.com made it obsolete.

Colombia's mobile wallet that reached 3M users but couldn't survive Nequi and Daviplata.

Brazilian cross-border payments unicorn. Rate rises. 30% layoff.

Cash flow prediction for supply chains that ran out of cash itself.

Financial services app for migrants in Chile. CMF licensing blocked scale.

Brazil's secured lending unicorn. Rate rises broke the model. 600 layoffs.

The merchant credit fintech that COVID turned from growth story to NPA nightmare.

India's Shark Tank star raised $650M at $2.85B. CEO Ashneer Grover's phone call threatening a Kotak banker went viral. The company sued him for ₹88 crore in fraud.

The $18 billion crypto hedge fund that borrowed $3.5 billion to bet on LUNA — then disappeared when it hit zero

Digitizing tontines couldn't fix the default rates eating the business alive.

Mexico's B2B payment optimization startup squeezed out between banks and larger fintech players

Digital auto financing startup crushed by the Fed's rate hikes wiping out its approval funnel.

Chile's financial product comparison platform squeezed out by bank incumbents and global aggregators

The UK crypto bank that lost 336 Bitcoin in a hack and never recovered operationally

Supply chain finance unicorn hopes dashed by a below-expectation SAP acquisition.

Mexico City crypto exchange raised $450K — CNBV 2023 regulation update required ITF-Virtual Asset authorization (18-24 months), only Bitso had full authorization, CNBV issued public warning on unauthorized crypto ITFs

Gig worker neobank SPAC'd at $4B — stock fell 96% as earned wage advance proved uncollectable at scale

The Tigray conflict didn't just destroy lives — it wiped out Soma Pay's entire client base.

Mexican auto-financing fintech that connected car buyers with lenders — shut down in 2022 when rising interest rates and credit losses made the personal vehicle loan portfolio unworkable.

Australia's BNPL pioneer. Block acquired it for $29B. Rate rises cut valuation 80%.

Mexico's leading mPOS. Raised $300M. Laid off 20% in 2022.

Vancouver's fintech darling bet on crypto at exactly the wrong moment.

Brazil's most-funded fintech cut 1,300 jobs (46% of staff) in 2022 as its asset-backed lending empire unraveled.

A German payment gateway that tried to out-Stripe Stripe with inferior onboarding and no moat.

Pay-per-mile car insurance for people who barely drive. The drivers who signed up barely drove — and barely paid.

Europe's most valuable startup lost 85% of its valuation in 13 months as interest rates ended the BNPL party

Argentina's cross-border digital lender collapsed when regulators in three countries found the books didn't add up.

Modern card issuing API that IPO'd at $15B — then Block contract renewal exposed 70% customer concentration

Argentine treasury fintech destroyed by 90% inflation and currency controls it had no hedge against.

Myanmar's top mobile wallet was crushed by a military coup — not a competitor.

Sweden's leading P2P lending platform raised $50M then wound down as credit losses and rate rises killed the model

The algorithmic stablecoin that destroyed $40 billion in value in 72 hours.

UK's first digital mortgage broker raised £23M, was acquired by Better.com — then shut when Better imploded.

Mula's blockchain remittance edge vanished when GCash and Western Union slashed their fees.

Latin America's first P2P lending platform pioneered in Argentina, Peru, and Mexico — then collapsed under FX restrictions, regulatory tightening, and Argentina's perennial economic crisis.

Israeli insurtech unicorn. $7B peak. 90% value destruction. Loss ratio never improved.

One-click checkout startup. $580M raised. $600K monthly revenue. Shut down.

France's top financial aggregator hit a wall when 1M users refused to pay for what they expected for free.

Robo-advisor unicorn. UBS agreed to buy it for $1.4B. Deal collapsed. CEO resigned.

Even $690M couldn't buy consumer wallet share from Grab and Shopee in Southeast Asia.

Eureeca pioneered equity crowdfunding in MENA but regulatory walls made scale impossible.

A 90-day GhIPSS suspension was all it took for enterprise clients to never come back.

Korea's super-app darling built a brokerage too fast and nearly took down the whole empire.

Chilean BNPL for e-commerce. Mercado Crédito arrived. Market dried up.

When your distribution partner collapses, your loan book collapses with it.

500K Russian users, zero options — Revolut shuttered its Russia arm in 72 hours.

Europe's most valuable fintech lost 85% of its $45.6B valuation in a single down round — the largest VC devaluation in history

Open banking for financial wellness — too early for lenders, too niche for employers.

A $4B SPAC valuation for an overdraft app — then 97% wiped out in 12 months.

Tyba democratized investing in Colombia, then got absorbed by the bank it was supposed to disrupt.

Raised $12M from Tiger Global; lost it to fraudsters within months of launch.

Importing a US lending marketplace model to Saudi Arabia without licensing clarity was a fatal mistake.

Australia's first neo-bank — returned all customer deposits before shutting down.

Mexico's largest BNPL platform. Rising rates broke the model.

Nigerian agent banking startup Kudi was swallowed whole in OPay and PalmPay's subsidy war.

Mexican SME lender. CEO fired. Renamed. Restructured.

Germany's crypto banking pioneer filed for insolvency as the crypto winter froze its balance sheet.

The $12B fintech that built its brand on SMB customers — then sent 10,000 of them 30-day termination notices to refocus on enterprise

Automating loan payments is good for borrowers and terrible for startup growth metrics.

Brazil's neobank for the unbanked. Pix killed the transaction revenue. Restructured.

Argentina's inflation made every construction dollar promise into a peso nightmare for Briq investors.

Africa's most valuable fintech startup hit by money laundering investigations and sexual harassment allegations simultaneously

Argentina's BCRA regulations and a parent company pivot ended Simple before it could prove its model.

Argentina's largest fintech. Hyperinflation ate the margins.

Berlin SMB bank raised €37M and grew to 40,000 business customers. Acquired by Qonto in 2022. Qonto migrated all customers and shut the Penta brand.

Cameroon's Anglophone crisis and linguistic complexity slowly strangled a promising savings platform.

French payments app raised €200M to become the Venmo of Europe—then pivoted and restructured as P2P payments proved impossible to monetise at scale.

Payment reconciliation SaaS. Co-founder conflict ended it.

Australian BNPL giant worth A$8B at peak — now worth A$700M after the rate-rise BNPL massacre

Australia's CDR open banking pioneer couldn't survive long enough for regulation to create real market demand.

Brazil's largest digital wallet. 67M users. Pix arrived and changed everything.

Cross-border payments for SMBs SPAC'd at $3.3B — stock fell 70% as global growth slowed

Peruvian P2P lending platform connecting SMEs with retail investors shut down in 2022 as rising interest rates and post-COVID default rates destroyed the unit economics of unsecured SME lending.

Going zero-fee against Orange Money and MTN in Ivory Coast was a financial suicide mission.

Costa Rica's mobile payment hopeful died waiting for a license that never came in time.

Nine years serving the underbanked, then Chime's venture subsidies made the business model impossible.

When Wagestream owns every employer relationship, there's no room for a second player.

Spanish neobank's Chilean expansion. Parent ran out of money first.

Financial services agent network in rural Mexico. CoDi arrived and changed everything.

Hyperinflation and a parent company's $100M debt spiral killed Zimbabwe's digital lender.

Canada's BNPL pioneer absorbed by the very wave it helped create.

KBZ's digital payments arm died when Myanmar's banking sector froze after the coup.

One fraudulent corporate client and €800K in bad debt ended Italy's invoice financing pioneer.

Turkey's payments consolidation after the iyzico mega-deal left no room for Paytrek.

Brazil's P2P SMB lender undone by pandemic defaults and regulatory headwinds

350,000 loyal Danish users couldn't save a free PFM app from acqui-hire oblivion.

$40B fintech. Restricted GameStop trading. Congressional hearings. Stock never recovered.

16 years of peer-to-peer lending, ended by the rules it helped create

Ghana's fintech cleanup and COVID panic drained Enrich Africa of users and liquidity simultaneously.

The original US neobank that proved the model worked — bought by BBVA for $117M and shut down 7 years later as collateral damage in BBVA's US exit

Korea's bank-backed neobank crushed between two ecosystem giants.

The Colombian lending fintech that couldn't survive Mexico's COVID credit crunch.

A payments compliance layer with FCA approval but only 12 paying clients before the money ran out.

Argentine consumer neobank targeting millennials — wound down in 2021 when the team pivoted to build Pomelo, a B2B fintech infrastructure company, acknowledging that the consumer product had not found viable product-market fit in Argentina's volatile economy.

Japan's first mobile bank absorbed before it could change Japanese banking.

Brazil's personal finance app with 6M users, sold for scraps to PicPay after Nubank made it irrelevant.

Nemo Savings had one banking partner — and one merger killed the entire startup.

Argentina's equity crowdfunding platform quietly shut down as economic chaos and capital controls made crowd investing impossible

Mobile money API pioneer acqui-hired away as telecoms commoditized its core infrastructure.

Supply-chain finance. Built on insurance that did not exist.

COVID wiped out Lendr's SME borrowers before regulators could finish them off.

Cambodia's central bank built Bakong and made ZigPay's QR dreams irrelevant.

The original neo-bank — killed not by the market but by the acquirer.

Zimbabwe's largest fintech accused of fueling black market dollars; regulators nearly destroyed it.

Nigeria's digital lender Carbon shut its Kenya expansion as COVID defaults piled up.

Indian checkout SaaS. Amazon acquired it. Project shelved.

Europe's most valuable neobank quietly closed its US operation — regulatory roadblocks and $9B valuations don't mix well

Ethiopia's fintech opportunity looked open — then the central bank slammed the door shut.

UK savings app offering 5% interest on bonds raised £33M. Could not reach profitability. Shut October 2021 with 30,000 customers.

Brazil's best payments infrastructure startup, swallowed by Stone and stripped of its startup DNA.

A century-old bank reinvented itself as a neobank, then got swallowed by a fintech.

Nigeria's Paga couldn't replicate its model in Angola — currency, regulation, and incumbents blocked every move.

When your parent company's auditors resign over accounting fraud, your mobile fintech dies too.

Tips aren't tips when regulators call them illegal loans.

Mexico's peer-to-peer lending pioneer. Shut down by the fintech law it helped draft.

Merchant payments pioneer swallowed by the very M-Pesa ecosystem it relied on.

Thailand's government free payment rails made DeepPocket irrelevant before it could grow.

Indonesia's SME payments darling survived COVID only by selling itself to Gojek.

Tanzania's payment switch was killed by the government making its entire service free.

Managua mobile payments for merchants raised $300K — international sanctions on Nicaragua in 2021-2022 tightened card processor requirements, FinTrade's primary payment gateway suspended Nicaragua operations, closed 2022

Australian neobank. Couldn't raise after COVID. Returned licence.

Germany's P2P lending pioneer. Open Banking arrived too late. Stagnated.

The €3.5B neobank that Brexit kicked out of Britain

€1.9B in a Philippine trust account that did not exist.

Sub-1% remittance fees are meaningless when regulators won't let you operate.

The accounting SaaS that sold AI-powered books — and quietly hired an army of human accountants to fake it

Germany's "Google of credit scoring" raised €200M and went bankrupt after predatory lending backlash across six countries.

Chile's first equity crowdfunding platform — wound down after seven years as CMF regulatory requirements made the platform model for retail equity investment economically unviable.

The original neobank visionary couldn't convert bank API deals into a sustainable enterprise business.

Brazil's first receivables marketplace, shut down by CVM regulation before it could scale.

Chilean robo-advisor. CMF investigation slowed everything down.

Hamburg fintech used 20,000 data points to lend to the unbanked across 8 countries. Credit losses in emerging markets consumed $484M. Filed for insolvency 2020.

The mobile banking pioneer that proved the thesis — then watched better-funded rivals harvest the market.

Chile's estallido social and COVID delivered a one-two punch that ended P2P invoice financing.

SMB lending unicorn sold to AmEx for far below its $1.2B valuation — then the brand was quietly killed

Serving boda-boda drivers was noble — ignoring AML compliance was fatal.

The Australian neobank that paid 2.25% on deposits before it had a single loan — and ran out of runway in the same week

Rwanda's payments infrastructure mandate demanded $600K the startup simply didn't have.

RBS spent millions building a neobank that lasted exactly six months.

The €24B German fintech that was hiding a €1.9B hole — and fooled everyone for years.

Munich's social banking pioneer tied interest rates to Facebook likes. Acquired by France's second-largest bank for €140M. Cultural clash shut it within 3 years.

Nigeria's alternative credit scorer couldn't outlast bad debt and regulatory walls.

Mexican P2P lending pioneer. Ley Fintech required it to become a bank.

Goldman-backed zero-fee remittances couldn't compete with Venmo and TransferWise.

Mexican SME lending startup. Couldn't survive the 2019 credit crunch.

Competing with EcoCash in Zimbabwe was always a losing battle — the RBZ just finished it faster.

Tanzania's promising P2P fintech died by regulatory rejection before its remittance rebirth.

Australia's ASX-listed P2P lender ran out of wholesale funding and became a shell company.

The Spanish insurance wallet startup. Ran out before reaching scale.

Helped Europeans chase better savings rates — then became invisible when its acquirer went wholesale.

$29.5M couldn't make retail investors care about municipal bonds.

BNP spent €150M building a neobank to compete with itself.

Estonia's homegrown neobank got steamrolled by the very fintech giants its country helped create.

Japan's robo-advice revolution met a wall of conservative investors and compliance costs.

$364M couldn't make exploitative lending ethical — regulators noticed.

KYC platform built for the crypto boom — killed by the crypto bust.

Zero-fee robo-advice means zero revenue — the math doesn't work at scale.

A profitable identity verification veteran sold for $300M rather than fight for independence.

Australia's favorite budgeting app got acqui-hired into irrelevance by Zip Co.

Lost in the shadow of LendingClub — and buried when that shadow collapsed.

Wala bet its entire business model on a crypto token — then the 2018 crypto crash wiped it out.

TransferWise and Revolut launched and made this startup's entire premise obsolete overnight.

Universal QR loyalty layer for grocers got steamrolled by Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Built the rails for P2P lending — then the trains stopped running.

Brazil's challenger bank was killed by its own banking partner's capital failure.

A £29M anchor investor pulling out sank the whole personal finance vision.

Thailand's OG digital wallet died when PromptPay made it redundant after 11 years.

$112M discovered that luxury asset lending is just pawnbroking with a VC deck.

Amex bought InAuth to bury it, not to build it — a classic acqui-kill.

Errol Damelin built a £1B payday lender on 5,853% APR loans. FCA capped rates in 2015. Wonga wrote off £220M in unaffordable loans. Filed administration August 2018 after compensation claim surge.

Waited for Open Banking to arrive — shut down before it did.

A social payment platform that enabled groups and communities to crowdfund events and settle payments with friends.

A single card that stored all your credit cards electronically — made obsolete by Apple Pay and Google Pay before it could achieve scale.

France's group payment app. Crédit Mutuel Arkéa acquired it. Product focus lost.

MENA's payment infrastructure pioneer erased when Amazon rebranded everything its own.

NZ's telco-backed mobile payments play burned NZD 40M before Apple Pay made it irrelevant.

Europe's best freelancer bank — absorbed and neutralized by a Spanish banking giant.

P2P lending pioneer. CEO resigned over loan data manipulation. Stock -50% in a day.

BT's financial network spinout got stranded on legacy tech while the cloud ate its lunch.

21-year-old Stanford student raised $25M from Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Silicon Valley royalty before launching. The app never achieved meaningful adoption. $25M consumed. Company dissolved 2016.

CaixaBank + Santander + Telefonica created a joint venture fintech with 27M EUR — then killed it in 2016 because it threatened their core businesses. Revenue in 2014: 2444 EUR.

Built retirement savings for freelancers — Goldman bought it and buried it.

Walmart led 50 retailers in a conspiracy to block Apple Pay — they suffered a data breach before launch and Apple Pay won anyway

Dan Wagner raised $250M+ at a self-declared $2.7B valuation for a mobile commerce platform that generated £2.3M in revenue. Went into administration February 2016. Revenue multiple: 1,200x.

The CEO stole $14.5M from his own ID verification company — then got caught.

The Spanish fintech that pivoted from near-death to a Nasdaq IPO.

Share everything you buy. Except your credit card number. Oops.

EventVue was a social networking platform that helped conference attendees connect online before and after attending events.

The digital gold currency that hit 5 million accounts and $2B in annual transactions — 13 years before Bitcoin — shut down after US DoJ indicted its founders for money laundering

The biometric payment startup that put fingerprint scanners in 2,600 grocery stores — and collapsed when its CEO's history of fraud convictions and $20M in personal misappropriation emerged

Online mortgage origination before it was possible — $100M raised, shut down when the math never worked.

Beenz.com invented internet currency in 1998. It raised $100M and failed. Bitcoin did it with $0 in VC.

Rocket Internet's SMB online lending platform raised €65M and operated in five countries before filing for insolvency as credit losses mounted.

MENA financial comparison platform found Jordan too small and UAE too competitive

Senegalese digital payments startup crushed by Orange Money's 80% mobile money market share

Australian AI banking app listed on ASX shut down after failing to find a viable business model

The London fintech using Open Banking to offer credit to immigrants and young people with thin credit files, raising 10 million pounds before shutting down in 2023

South Korea's neobank competing against a bank owned by the country's most used app

The UK first fully digital buy-to-let mortgage lender shut down when the UK property market correction made its loan book unviable.

Egyptian super-app for gig workers and informal economy that raised $120M but hit MENA credit ceiling.

Peru's leading payment gateway absorbed into Credicorp/BCP banking group, ending its independent startup chapter.

REBEL built Brazil first credit marketplace for educated young adults, raised 25 million dollars, and slowly wound down operations between 2022 and 2023 as rising interest rates destroyed the economics of personal lending to an already-indebted Brazilian middle class.

South Africa digital remittance startup targeting intra-Africa corridors that raised $5M before World Remit and Mama Money made the standalone model unviable.

The UK equity loan startup helping first-time buyers get on the property ladder, wound down when rising interest rates destroyed its funding model

PayPal-acquired European mPOS exited Brazil after losing to local champions

Turkish payments pioneer acquired by PayU at a soft valuation as macro deteriorated

Ghana B2B payments platform swamped by currency crisis and Wave's free model

Zimbabwe mobile money dominant player destroyed by hyperinflation and government intervention

Tanzanian consumer payments app killed as team pivoted fully to B2B remittances

BNPL and micro-installments for Indonesia's gig workers — OJK closed the door

Jordan's SME lender that couldn't make the numbers work under interest rate caps

Thai digital insurance aggregator blocked by OIC regulations and incumbent broker dominance

Buy-now-pay-later for Japanese consumers without credit cards

Colombian fintech for informal micro-merchants raised $35M and shut down when it could not monetize an audience that could barely afford smartphones.

Kenyan digital lender killed by the 2019 interest rate cap and predatory lending crackdown

The Spanish BNPL pioneer backed by BNP Paribas that built buy-now-pay-later across Spain, France and Italy before its corporate parent abandoned the venture

Pan-African payments unicorn imploded after FTX collapse gutted its investor and crypto strategy

Zero-fee remittance pioneer absorbed and hollowed out by WorldRemit

Brazil's pioneer payment gateway destroyed by Wirecard fraud

Ethiopia's mobile money startup was shut when the National Bank mandated Telebirr exclusivity

Bangladeshi digital wallet displaced by bKash's dominant position and Bangladesh Bank mandates

Nigerian B2B payment infrastructure for SMEs — CBN policy shifts destroyed the model

New Zealand open banking infrastructure startup stranded by regulatory delay and 5M-person market

Lithuanian crypto bank raised $150M in ICO and delivered almost nothing

Telco mobile money giant retreated as fintech specialists undercut on every dimension

Tanzania's gig worker payment platform couldn't outcompete M-Pesa's embedded business tools