Pulse of Fintech

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.

Pulse of Fintech H2’24

Global analysis of fintech funding

Download

Pulse of Fintech H2’24: Australian insights summary

Insights into the Australian fintech landscape

Download

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.

With rates only just coming off a fourteen-year high and an upcoming federal election in the first half of 2025, we expect investor sentiment to remain vigilant and likely focused on the mature and strategic end of the market.

Daniel Teper

Partner

Mergers & Acquisitions and Head of Fintech (Australia)

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).

All currency amounts are in US$ unless otherwise specified.