The Rusbase portal (Rb.ru), with the support of VTB Bank, has published a map of the Russian FinTech market – an interactive guide to companies that create high-tech financial products for businesses, banks and end-users.

The first version of the Russian fintech map was released by Rb.ru in March 2016. In the new iteration of the map, the editors revised the segmentation and updated the data on the participating companies.

The goal of the project is to most clearly reproduce the picture of the Russian FinTech market and release a product that will be useful to startups, banks, corporations from other industries, investors and everyone interested in financial technologies.

“VTB Bank has been actively cooperating with fintech startups for many years, and we are very pleased with the rapid growth of independent fintech. This develops a competitive environment and creates new incentives for traditional banks to bring innovative products and services for clients to the market,” said Natalia Degtyareva, Director of the VTB Bank Corporate Accelerator.

Startups with a finished product (not below MVP), operating in the Russian market, as well as having at least one founder from Russia in their team, are on the map. The companies are divided into four main areas – personal finance, business solutions, banking solutions and InsurTech – with subcategories inside.

In a separate section, corporate startup initiatives of Russian banks are published with information on the format of work, current inquiries and contacts.

Fintech monitoring

“According to an EY study, Russia is one of the three leading countries with the greatest penetration of fintech services into the lives of people and businesses. Fintech is also called one of the areas that will be interesting for venture investors in the next 10 years,” notes Vladislav Zdorenko, Co-founder of the Startech.vc. venture company.

In the report by Frank RG, Dsight and Visa on the Russian market of payment products, experts among the key fintech trends highlight partner products in RetailTech, biometrics, embedded finance, services and subscription products, as well as neobanking and PFM services.

The Rb.ru map supports the analysts’ observations and clearly reflects the current status of the domestic fintech market – with its trends and specifics:

- in recent years, the share of solutions in the field of personal finance has significantly increased: instant transfers and installments, work with financial literacy and investments,

- banks are actively piloting biometrics in different modalities - face, fingerprints, veins of the palms, iris of the eyes,

- Russian digital banks work primarily for SMEs - it is difficult to compete with banks in the retail segment given their ecosystem focus and capabilities,

- the pandemic has significantly promoted the trend for contactless tips with QR codes,

- the segment offering solutions for banks is stable, companies from it are actively going abroad,

- solutions at the junction of retail and banking products are relevant

- crypto projects originally from the Russian Federation traditionally work immediately for the whole world,

- banks continue to absorb demanded fintech solutions from the market.

“If you look at the map, the growth of new players in recent years looks modest. It is difficult for independent fintech companies to compete with technologically advanced banks in Russia, due to their huge resource in the form of capital. Instead, projects in the field of insurance emerge, which pleases.

At the same time, I can note a significant number of global fintech projects with strong Russian-speaking founders. For example, a whole cohort of projects in banking for small business – Anna Money in the UK, Monite and Finom in Germany. It will be interesting to see how Arival is launched in the United States,” said Denis Efremov, principal at Fort Ross Ventures, author at Telegram-channel pro-Venture.

“We should expect an increase in the number of players in the e-commerce segment, a very strong development of d2c, and, of course, we should not forget about the data analytics market – the pandemic acted as a driver for the development of this market, and the profit of industry participants reached 24,9 billion rubles.

Every day we leave a huge number of “digital traces,” which are nothing more than information, and information today is one of the best selling goods, ” added Alexander Popov, expert and author of the Telegram-channel FinVeritas.

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