Over the previous years, France has emerged as a significant fintech hub, with the variety of firms working within the sector hovering greater than tenfold from simply 100 in 2012 to 1,145 in 2024, in line with a brand new report by KPMG France and France Fintech.
Amongst these enterprise, 14 have reached billion-dollar valuations, accounting for practically half of all French unicorn startups. This surge displays the speedy growth of France’s fintech sector, and its rising affect throughout the French startup ecosystem.
France’s booming fintech sector can also be demonstrated by its increasing workforce. By 2024, the sector employed 54,000 folks, together with 43,000 primarily based in France, highlighting its significance as a key driver of native employment.
This determine represents an almost sevenfold enhance from 8,000 in 2018, showcasing the sector’s speedy progress and rising impression on the job market.
France’s fintech trade can also be more and more increasing globally, although most stay primarily targeted on the European market. At the moment, 23% of French fintech firms have a overseas presence. Amongst these, 63% serve completely the European market, whereas 24% have expanded each inside and past the area.
Inside Europe, Spain (48%) is the highest vacation spot for French fintech firms establishing a overseas presence, adopted by Germany (35%), Italy (31%) and the UK (31%).
Outdoors of Europe, Latin America is the main area the place French fintech corporations are increasing (64%), adopted by North America (45%), Asia (32%) and Africa (32%).
Fintech funding in France rebounds; M&A exercise surges
After experiencing a steep 66% year-over-year (YoY) in 2023, fintech funding in France rebounded in 2024, rising 29.3% YoY to EUR 1.3 billion. This progress was pushed by bigger rounds of funding, with the common ticket measurement practically doubling from EUR 7.7 million in 2023 to EUR 12.6 million in 2024.
funding pattern, business-to-business (B2B) fintech led the sector in 2024, accounting for about 35% of whole fintech funding and greater than 20% of transactions. B2B fintech was adopted by insurtech, which represented greater than 30% of funding worth and about 18% of transactions, and threat administration, which made up roughly 19% of funding worth and 19% of transactions.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) exercise was additionally sturdy in 2024. French fintech firms had been concerned in 49 M&A transactions in 2024, marking a brand new all-time excessive and a 32% YoY enhance from 37 transactions in 2023.
Of those, 33% had been intra-sector offers: 12 fintech firms acquired their home opponents, whereas one acquired a European counterpart. Moreover, 4 French fintech firms had been acquired by non-French European gamers.
AI and blockchain as key traits in 2025
The report spotlights key improvements shaping the French fintech panorama in 2025. It highlights the whereas the primary wave of fintech innovation targeted on funds, crowdfunding and bettering buyer expertise, this present wave is pushed by actual technological breakthroughs, notably in synthetic intelligence and blockchain expertise.
Over the previous years, France has developed a thriving ecosystem blockchain and crypto-asset entrepreneurs, with firms like Paymium and Coinhouse pioneering crypto markets, whereas startups like Ledger are main crypto-wallet options. In the meantime, ventures like Kriptown are leveraging blockchain expertise to deal with enterprise financing challenges.
Kriptown goals to handle the restricted fairness financing choices for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startup by providing buyers entry to shares with enhanced liquidity by a 24/7 secondary market. In September 2024, the startup secured a EUR 4.2 million Collection A to develop the primary European inventory alternate devoted to SMEs utilizing blockchain expertise underneath the European DLT Pilot Regime.
One other standout startup in France’s crypto panorama is Ledger, an organization which specializes within the safety and administration of digital belongings and cryptocurrencies. Ledger provides related gadgets and platforms, with greater than 6 million gadgets offered to customers in 180 international locations and 10+ languages, 100+ monetary establishments and business manufacturers. Valued at US$1.47 billion, Ledger is certainly one of France’s most beneficial fintech startups. It claims to safe greater than 20% of the world’s crypto belongings.
AI is one other key pattern in French fintech, with startups more and more integrating the expertise to reinforce personalization, effectivity and operational fashions.
Qonto, a number one enterprise finance resolution for SMEs and freelancers, partnered with Mud in September 2024 to deploy AI-specialized brokers throughout the corporate, with two standout examples being Germi and Tolki. These Mud-powered brokers are considerably bettering completely different points of Qonto’s operations, with Germi specializing in compliance and threat evaluation duties, whereas Tolki makes a speciality of content material localization.
Alan, one other startup unicorn from France, launched in November 2024 an AI well being assistant. Known as Mo, the function assists customers with medical queries whereas guaranteeing doctor-reviewed responses inside quarter-hour to keep up accuracy. Mo is generally a chatbot for now, however the firm plans to provide it the power to recollect extra particulars and add personalization options to make it extra proactive.
Alan, a medical health insurance firm that goals to construct an excellent app for all issues associated to healthcare, is valued at US$4.46 billion and covers 680,000 folks with its medical health insurance merchandise.
Featured picture credit score: edited from freepik
