Fintech Startup Failures

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buenos Aires AI fund management raised $400K — Milei December 2023 deregulation changed FCI tax treatment, investors moved to USD/stocks/crypto, FCI market contracted abruptly, closed before 12 months

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mexican SME lender. CEO fired. Renamed. Restructured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Argentina's largest fintech. Hyperinflation ate the margins.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Payment reconciliation SaaS. Co-founder conflict ended it.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

The €3.5B neobank that Brexit kicked out of Britain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Chilean robo-advisor. CMF investigation slowed everything down.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Vietnam's consumer lending fintech was shut by State Bank crackdown on unlicensed digital credit

India's payments startup competing against PhonePe and Google in a UPI market where the rails are free

Mexico P2P lending pioneer that survived eight years of growth before Mexico's fintech law compliance requirements made the business model unviable.

The pioneer of Indonesian P2P lending raised $131M from MUFG and SBI, reached $700M+ in loans disbursed, then had its lending license revoked in October 2024 as NPLs spiraled.

Nicaragua's fintech startup classified as a foreign agent and dissolved by law

LatAm payment orchestration startup raised $25M then was commoditized by Stripe and Adyen

San Francisco home equity sharing fintech that raised $175M before rising rates and a frozen housing market made the investment returns math stop working.

Norwegian BNPL startup that listed on NASDAQ at $1.3B and lost 98% of its value as US subprime lease-to-own defaults exploded and the BNPL model collapsed.

SME payments champion squeezed by global card networks

Yemen's fintech for a country at war where banking infrastructure itself was a casualty

Argentina first fully digital bank raised $20M, was absorbed by Grupo Supervielle, and its brand disappeared within two years.

Third-largest US wholesale mortgage lender that went public at $2B and exited the market in one year.

Zambia fintech: MTN Mobile Money (5M+) and Zoona ($29M raised, agent network) covered the market before the startup could establish presence

Nepal's digital wallet pioneer was squeezed by Nepal Rastra Bank's PSP licensing overhaul

South African BNPL pioneer sold to Zip Co at discount as local market proved too small

Guyana's fintech startup for the informal economy that the oil boom was rapidly formalizing away

SME lending platform for Southeast Asia — a promising model undone by credit losses

Guatemala fintech third attempt: Tigo Money (65%), Bi Digital (2M), Bantrab, BANRURAL (4M rural accounts) and WU ($20B remittances) confirmed covering 95%+ of addressable market

Paraguay's neobank pioneer discovered the informal economy was both its market and its undoing

Crypto-powered remittance startup connecting Colombia and Venezuela that ran out of road.

Latvian Banking-as-a-Service startup crowded out by better-capitalized European BaaS platforms

Vietnam's fintech startup in a market where MoMo had 30 million users before the company launched

Scotland's neobank that discovered Scottish identity isn't a fintech differentiator

Saudi SME payment and POS startup raised $6M then sold to network carrier as super-apps absorbed SME payments

Spanish embedded finance platform raised €8M but could not achieve enterprise client traction

Croatia's neobank whose competitive advantage disappeared the day Croatia joined the Eurozone

Chilean payment gateway for SMEs — absorbed by Transbank's digital pivot

Sri Lanka fintech operational during the 10-hour daily power cuts and the protests that toppled the government

The LGBTQ plus neobank that discovered community-focused banking is not enough to build a durable financial product.

Tanzanian B2B payments startup displaced by M-Pesa for Business and Vodacom's SME banking push

Mobile lending pioneer retreated from its home market

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

Angola's fintech that the kwanza devaluation kept killing on a quarterly basis