Fintech valuations remained high in H1’21 as investors continued to see the space as attractive and well-performing. This likely drove the explosion of unicorn births in the first half of 2021. While the importance of unicorn status is waning in the US given its proliferation of unicorns, it is still a significant milestone elsewhere in the Americas. In H1’21, Canadian e-commerce company Clearco and ID verification firm Trulioo became unicorns, in addition to Mexico-based cryptocurrency platform Bitso.

During H1’21, a number of corporates in the US made big bets on cryptocurrencies, including Paypal — which acquired crypto-security firm Curv in H1’21 following its announcement of a partnership with Paxos in late 2020. Paypal ventures contributed to Paxos’s $300 million raise in H1’21.² Facebook, through the Diem Association, also continued to move forward with its plans to launch a US dollar stablecoin before the end of the year.³

H1’21 saw a number of consolidations occurring in the B2B space, including Bill.com’s acquisition of Divvy. The B2B payments space is quite hot — and is expected to remain very attractive to investors given the amount of room it has to grow as companies across the Americas move from cheque-based payments to electronic payments. As companies look to scale and gain market share, more consolidations will likely occur.

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