Australian fintech investment trends
Australian deal value improves markedly in 2024, however volumes remain challenged with the start-up and scale-up environment still struggling to find its footing.
In H2’24, Australia registered $1.1 billion in investments across 43 deals. This data suggests a material improvement from the prior year, and that the low point reached in 2023 (with only $839 million of investment for the whole year) might be behind us.
This H2 result was largely a result of a standout quarter in Q3’24, in which two large deals were closed; the first one being Experian’s acquisition of Illion, a leading data and technology company, for $540 million, and the second being the acquisition of Lonesec deal, for $197 million, in which its largest shareholder (GDG) acquired a 100% ownership stake. While these deals were material in value, deal count remains down 14% on H1’24, indicating that the investment activity is struggling to pick up its pace, especially at a seed/start-up and scale-up level.
Other notable deals for the period were the Spaceship acquisition by trading platform giant eToro, for $55 million. Additionally, Prospa, a listed online small business lender, was taken private at a valuation of $49 million.
Top 4 APAC trends to watch in H2'24
- Increasing investment outside of China as macroeconomic conditions improve.
- Growing focus on generative AI and on AI-enablement, but particularly in China.
- Several central banks across the APAC region finalising pilots or moving beyond pilots and into production during 2025.
- China-based fintechs beginning to look at IPO opportunities again.
Global fintech investment update
2024 proved to be another challenging year for the global fintech market as both total investment ($95.6 billion1) and the volume of deals (4,639) fell to seven-year lows. Ongoing macroeconomic challenges, geopolitical conflicts and tensions, and a number of high-profile elections in major jurisdictions around the world kept the level of uncertainty very high, leading to a pullback in fintech investment particularly on the M&A and PE fronts.
H2’24 was more subdued than H1’24 by a fair margin. Total global investment fell from $51.7 billion to $43.9 billion between the first and second halves of the year, driven by M&A deal value and VC investment falling from $28.1 billion to $21.6 billion and from $22.5 billion to $20.9 billion, respectively. But these numbers only tell a part of the story, as Q3’24 and Q4’24 saw wildly different results; M&A deal value nearly doubled from $7.4 billion to $14.2 billion quarter-over-quarter, while VC investment rose from $9.7 billion to $11.2 billion over the same period.
The Americas accounted for the largest share of fintech investment in H2’24 ($31 billion), including the only $1 billion+ deals (Nuvei – $6.3 billion, Envestnet – $4.5 billion, Candescent – $2.45 billion, Transact Campus – $1.6 billion, Bridge – $1.1 billion). Comparatively, the EMEA region attracted $7.3 billion – led by the $561 million acquisition of Netherlands-based Knab Bank, while ASPAC saw $5.5 billion – led by a $788 million raise by Philippines-based Mynt. The payments space remained the hottest fintech subsector over 2024 by far, attracting $31 billion in investment, followed by digital assets and currencies ($9.1 billion) and regtech ($7.4 billion).
1All currency amounts are in US$ unless otherwise specified.
