Ukrainian fintech in 2023: facts and figures

The Ukrainian Association of Fintech and Innovative Companies (UAFIC) has presented the Fintech Catalog 2023, a comprehensive research and detailed overview of the financial technology market in Ukraine, with the participation of over 240 industry companies, as reported by FintechInsider.

According to this research, there are currently 246 fintech companies operating in Ukraine, with seven of them founded in 2022, which is after the full-scale Russian invasion. At the time of the study, 68% of fintech companies had already reached the breakeven point, 66% were self-funded, and 33% operated in the international market. Women founded 17% of Ukrainian fintech companies, while 55% had representatives from the Ukrainian Armed Forces among their ranks, including both men and women.

The research highlights that the majority of fintech companies in Ukraine (54%) are small, with up to 25 employees. Among them, 11% have teams consisting of 1 to 5 individuals.

Five percent of Ukrainian fintech companies are exclusively located abroad, which is evidently related to the Russian invasion. In terms of domestic location, 77% of companies are situated in Kyiv, followed by Lviv (6% of companies), and Dnipro (5% of companies).

Forty-nine percent of fintech companies identify Ukraine as their key market, while 12% already operate in the European market, and 9% in the US market. Fifty-two percent of the surveyed companies plan to enter the international arena, while 15% do not have such plans.

Over the past year, the share of fintech companies has increased in the non-banking services, marketplaces, and RegTech sectors. Seventy-nine percent of fintech companies have identified artificial intelligence as one of the promising technologies for the Ukrainian market. Additionally, the main technologies employed by Ukrainian fintech companies are APIs, cloud services, and chatbots.

Twenty-seven percent of surveyed fintech companies plan to form partnerships with strategic foreign investors, while 33% have previously attracted investments, with half of them allocating funds for operational expenses.

Currently, 66% of fintech companies are self-funded, 15% rely on private investor funds, and 5% receive support from venture capital funds.

Twenty percent of fintech companies plan to continue raising their own funds, while 20% are seeking private investors. Sixteen percent intend to attract investments from venture capital funds.

The Ukrainian Fintech Catalog is an annual market research publication that has been released since 2019. This year's edition was created with the support of the National Bank of Ukraine, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, the International Finance Corporation (IFC, World Bank Group) in partnership with the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs of Switzerland (SECO) and the Good Governance Fund of the UK Government in Ukraine (GGF), the USAID Financial Sector Transformation Project, and Visa.

Ukrainian digital solutions are quite popular in Europe. For instance, based on the Ukrainian application Diia, an analog for the provision of state services will be developed in Estonia.