In its biannual Pulse of Fintech report, KPMG said total investments for the year eclipsed US$2.5 billion; nearly equalling pre-COVID highs in 2019 of US$2.6 billion and up on the US$2.2 billion reported in 2020.
In the second half of 2021 alone, US$1.5 billion investments were made in fintech M&A, PE and VC.
Notable investments in the year included Airwallex and Till Payments that raised $415 million and $125 million respectively.
“The fintech sector continues to mature and rebound in Australia – investments are taking place across a range of sub-sectors and from a broad set of investor groups. As well as the increase in overall investment in 2021, we also saw a significant shift in deal volume, with 134 deals recorded across the year, compared to 84 in 2020 and 72 in 2019,” KPMG Australia’s head of fintech, Dan Teper, said.
“This would indicate that we are continuing to see investment in start-up and scale-up businesses, as well as significant M&A activity for more mature players in the space.
“We expect this momentum to continue and predict that 2022 will be a record year for fintech investment in Australia.”
Globally, total global fintech funding was reported to be US$210 billion across 5,684 deals in 2021, with the biggest being Italy-based Nexi’s US$9.2 billion acquisition of payments processor Nets.
Blockchain and crypto investments also proved to be big again last year, with an increase of US$5.5 billion from 2020 to $US$30.2 billion.
