ETF investing

Revolut

Nik Storonsky grew up moving between Russia and France before landing in London as a derivatives trader. Vlad Yatsenko was a software engineer who'd spent years building financial systems. In 2015 they sat down and asked a question that should have occurred to banks years earlier: why does spending money abroad still cost so much? The answer they built was Revolut — initially a prepaid card with no foreign exchange fees, then a multi-currency account, then a trading platform, then an insurance product, then a business banking offering, then something that's increasingly hard to describe as anything other than a full financial operating system. Revolut didn't unbundle banking so much as rebuild it from scratch for people who found the existing version frustrating and expensive. The numbers now are genuinely striking for a company that started with two people and a card. Revenue reached £4.5 billion in 2025, up 46% year on year, with net profit of £1.3 billion. The customer base grew to 68.3 million retail users — one in five working-age adults in Europe — plus 767,000 businesses. The company employs 12,200 people across more than 25 countries and was valued at $75 billion in a November 2025 secondary share sale, making it Europe's most valuable private technology company. The milestone that mattered most, though, arrived in March 2026: a full UK banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority, ending a three-year application process that had become the most-watched regulatory saga in European fintech. The licence means Revolut can now protect UK deposits up to £120,000, offer authorised consumer credit, and compete directly with high street banks for mortgage and lending business. It's the piece that transforms Revolut from a very successful payments app into a regulated bank. The company has also applied for a US banking charter and is expanding aggressively into Latin America, having opened its first bank outside Europe in Mexico. The original thesis — that banking could be cheaper, faster, and simpler — hasn't changed. The scale at which it's now being tested has.

Founded 2015

Invesdor

Invesdor is a European equity crowdfunding platform that lets retail investors back early-stage companies and SMEs with growth potential. Founded in 2012, it operates across the Nordic and Baltic regions, democratizing access to private company investments that were once reserved for institutional players and high-net-worth individuals. The platform handles everything from deal sourcing and due diligence to investor communication and cap table management, removing friction from what is traditionally a complex, opaque process. Unlike traditional venture capital, which concentrates returns among a select few, Invesdor allows ordinary Europeans to own pieces of interesting companies—from deeptech startups to established SMEs looking to scale. The company has facilitated hundreds of millions in funding across its markets, positioning itself as the go-to platform for anyone serious about alternative investing. In a landscape crowded with robo-advisors and passive ETF apps, Invesdor stands apart by offering real company ownership and direct founder engagement. It's become essential infrastructure for the European entrepreneurial ecosystem, bridging the funding gap for companies too ambitious for traditional bank loans but too early for institutional VCs.

Founded 2012

Portu

Czech investment culture has shifted noticeably over the past decade — from a population that primarily held cash savings to one increasingly comfortable with regulated investment products, particularly among the generation that came of age financially after 2010. Portu was founded in Prague in 2018 to serve that emerging investor base with a digital wealth management platform offering diversified ETF portfolios, retirement planning products, and child savings accounts under a single mobile-first interface. The product was deliberately designed for first-time investors — clear language, low minimum investments, transparent fees, and educational content that helps users understand what they are actually buying rather than the opaque advice models of traditional Czech wealth management. Portu is part of the WOOD Group ecosystem, giving it the institutional backing of one of Central Europe's significant investment firms while maintaining the digital-native product experience that its target users expect. In the Czech wealth tech landscape, Portu has built one of the more successful examples of a Central European robo-advisor reaching genuine consumer scale — proof that the broader European thesis about digital wealth management for first-time investors translates well into markets where investment culture is still being formed.

Founded 2018

Anaxago

Anaxago is a European investment platform that democratizes access to private market deals, letting retail investors back startups and SMEs that would normally require deep pockets and insider connections. The platform sidesteps the gatekeeping that has long defined venture capital, offering curated equity stakes in growth-stage companies across tech, real estate, and other sectors. Founded in 2014, it operates across multiple European markets and has processed hundreds of millions in investments, positioning itself as a bridge between ambitious entrepreneurs and everyday investors seeking portfolio diversification beyond public markets. What sets Anaxago apart is its focus on transparency and accessibility. Rather than opaque fund structures or minimum investment requirements that exclude ordinary savers, it lets users invest from relatively modest amounts while maintaining rigorous due diligence on every deal. The platform handles the mechanics of investment management, shareholder rights, and secondary market liquidity—functions that typically require armies of lawyers and compliance teams. It's part of a broader shift toward democratized finance, where technology makes previously exclusive opportunities available to anyone with capital and appetite for risk. In the European fintech landscape, where crowdfunding and alternative investment platforms have proliferated, Anaxago has carved out credibility through regulatory compliance, deal flow quality, and a genuine commitment to investor protection. It represents how fintech can unbundle traditional wealth management, making private market exposure a normal part of retail investing rather than a privilege reserved for the wealthy.

Founded 2014

Freetrade

Freetrade is a London-based investing app that stripped away the gatekeepers between everyday Europeans and the stock market. Founded on the principle that trading shouldn't cost you a fortune in fees, it lets you buy fractional shares of thousands of stocks and ETFs for zero commission—something that would have seemed impossible a decade ago. The app democratizes retail investing by making it accessible, transparent, and genuinely affordable. While traditional brokers buried fees in spreads and commissions, Freetrade charges nothing for trades and offers a refreshingly straightforward pricing model. You get real-time data, a clean mobile interface, and the ability to build diversified portfolios without watching fees erode returns. In a European market where retail investing was often treated as a luxury product for the wealthy, Freetrade positioned itself as the alternative—serious investing without the pretense or the price tag. The platform appeals to younger investors who want to own individual stocks and ETFs but were previously priced out or intimidated by legacy brokers. Today, Freetrade represents a shift in how Europeans think about stock ownership: not as something reserved for the financially elite, but as a fundamental right. It's embedded itself in the broader fintech movement toward dematerializing finance and making capital markets participation the default rather than the exception.

Founded 2017

Avanza

Avanza is Sweden's largest independent online brokerage, a no-frills investment platform that democratized stock trading for Swedish retail investors two decades ago. What started as a scrappy alternative to traditional banks has become the go-to app for millennials and Gen Z who want to trade, invest, and save without paying legacy banking fees. The platform strips away unnecessary complexity—no advisors, no jargon, just direct market access at transparent prices. Avanza operates in that interesting middle ground between a neobank and a pure trading platform. It offers savings accounts, pension accounts, and investment accounts with a sharp focus on user experience and low costs. The company has built a cultural following in Sweden, becoming almost synonymous with retail investing for a generation that views traditional brokers as relics. Beyond just equities and funds, Avanza has expanded into savings products, retirement planning, and financial education—positioning itself as a genuine financial companion rather than just a transaction layer. Its dominance in the Nordic market reflects a broader European shift toward direct-to-consumer investment platforms that compete on transparency, speed, and mobile-first design. Avanza exemplifies how fintech can win by doing one thing exceptionally well and then expanding thoughtfully into adjacent categories. The company's influence extends beyond Sweden into a broader shift in how younger Europeans think about investing: without gatekeepers, without unnecessary fees, and entirely on their own terms.

Founded 1999

Scalable Capital

Scalable Capital sits at the intersection of wealth management and technology, offering algorithmic portfolio management that strips away the pretense of traditional advisory. The Berlin-based platform automates investment decisions through factor-based strategies, letting users build diversified portfolios without the six-figure minimums or quarterly check-ins that characterize private banking. What makes Scalable different is its obsession with cost transparency. Rather than burying fees in percentages most investors never question, the platform charges a flat monthly fee regardless of account size, eliminating the perverse incentive for advisors to push larger positions. The investment thesis itself is refreshingly unsentimental: diversify broadly across global equities and bonds, rebalance automatically, and let compound interest do the work. Scalable operates in a market crowded with robo-advisors, but it's positioned itself as the thinking person's alternative to both passive ETF apps and expensive human advisors. It's gained meaningful traction across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where wealth management has traditionally meant stuffy bank meetings and outdated fee structures. The company represents a broader European fintech trend: taking institutional investment practices and making them accessible, affordable, and friction-free for ordinary people who simply want their money to work without constant hand-holding.

Founded 2014

Vivid Money

Vivid Money is a Berlin-based fintech that collapsed the traditional distinction between banking, investing, and spending into a single mobile-first experience. Launched in 2020, it positioned itself as the European answer to all-in-one financial apps—a place where you could manage your checking account, invest in fractional shares and crypto, and pay with virtual cards, all without leaving the app. The platform built its early reputation on speed and accessibility. Account opening took minutes rather than days. The investment side felt more like TradingView-for-consumers than stuffy wealth management. Virtual card creation was instantaneous, and the app's design sensibility leaned toward the minimalist and modern rather than corporate banking's beige aesthetic. Vivid positioned itself against traditional banks' glacial pace and regulatory burden, while also differentiating from pure-play neobanks that didn't offer investing. It moved quickly to add crypto features when the market demanded them, and secured backing from tier-one investors who believed in the all-in-one thesis. However, the company faced headwinds from regulatory tightening around crypto and the broader fintech funding winter. In late 2024, reports emerged of operational restructuring and potential insolvency, marking a sobering turn for what had been one of Europe's most closely watched fintech challengers. Vivid's arc—from breakthrough disruptor to distressed turnaround—reflects the volatility of the European fintech landscape and the challenge of building a diversified financial platform without institutional heritage or captive customer bases.

Founded 2020

Debitum

Debitum is a peer-to-peer lending platform that connects investors across Europe with emerging market borrowers, primarily small businesses and consumers in Africa and Southeast Asia. Rather than traditional bank intermediaries, Debitum uses blockchain technology and smart contracts to facilitate direct lending relationships, cutting out middlemen and offering investors returns typically unavailable in their home markets. The platform operates on a marketplace model where verified borrowers access capital while European investors diversify into emerging markets at institutional-grade returns. What sets Debitum apart is its hybrid approach: it combines traditional credit underwriting with transparent, technology-enabled funding mechanics. Unlike neobanks focused on consumer checking or payment apps targeting young professionals, Debitum sits at the intersection of capital markets access and peer-to-peer finance, targeting financially sophisticated individuals seeking yield. The company tokenizes loans on its platform, allowing fractional investment and secondary market trading. Debitum represents a growing category of European fintech platforms that treat emerging markets not as charity cases but as genuine investment opportunities, democratizing access to higher-yielding assets traditionally reserved for institutional investors.

Founded 2015

eToro

eToro has spent two decades building what amounts to a social layer on top of financial markets. You follow traders the way you'd follow accounts on Instagram, copy their portfolios automatically, and learn from their moves—or at least you try to. The platform democratized retail investing long before it became fashionable, letting anyone trade stocks, ETFs, and crypto with fractional shares and competitive spreads. What still sets it apart is the community angle: the assumption that retail investors learn better together than alone. eToro operates across desktop and mobile with a focus on ease of use, though opinions split sharply on whether copying real traders is genuine investment education or a shortcut that breeds overconfidence. The company has regulatory licenses across multiple jurisdictions and serves millions of users globally, making it one of Europe's most recognizable trading and investing platforms. In the fractured world of retail trading—where commission-free brokers and app-based competitors have multiplied—eToro remains differentiated by its social-first DNA and broader asset classes under one roof.

Founded 2007

Wealthify

Investing in the UK has historically required either enough money to interest a private bank or enough financial confidence to navigate a self-directed brokerage account — neither of which describes the typical UK saver with a few thousand pounds set aside who would benefit from being invested rather than holding cash in a low-interest savings account. Wealthify was founded in Cardiff in 2015 to serve that customer with a robo-advisory platform that accepted investments from £1, used a short questionnaire to determine risk profile, and managed diversified portfolios automatically. The proposition was deliberately accessible: no minimum investment, transparent fees, no jargon, and an interface designed to make investing feel approachable rather than intimidating. Wealthify was acquired by Aviva in 2017 — one of the UK's largest insurance companies — providing it with both distribution and the institutional credibility that helps newer investment platforms attract conservative savers. The Cardiff-based team has continued operating with significant autonomy as part of Aviva's wealth offering. In the UK robo-advisory landscape — which has been smaller and more fragmented than the US equivalent — Wealthify built a particularly accessible position for first-time investors, and its acquisition by Aviva represents one of the cleaner examples of a robo-advisor finding a strategic home with a major financial services group rather than struggling to build sustainable scale independently.

Founded 2015

Trade Republic

Trade Republic has fundamentally rewritten the script for European retail investing. Where traditional brokers demanded minimums, paperwork, and fees that could swallow returns, this Berlin-based neobroker arrived in 2015 with a smartphone app and a radical premise: investing should cost almost nothing and take seconds. The platform trades stocks, ETFs, and fractional shares across multiple European exchanges with zero commissions. Its core strength is simplicity—the interface strips away complexity while maintaining the depth serious investors expect. Execution is fast, the fee structure is transparent (mostly subscription-based rather than per-trade), and the onboarding process reflects modern expectations around speed and convenience. Trade Republic sits at the convergence of neobanking and trading. While competitors like Revolut added trading as a secondary feature, Trade Republic built the entire experience around it. The company holds banking licenses across multiple EU jurisdictions, giving it the infrastructure to manage cash, offer savings features, and issue debit cards—all in service of becoming a financial operating system for young Europeans. Its expansion beyond trading into banking products reflects a broader industry shift: the most valuable fintech companies aren't specialists anymore. They're ecosystems. Trade Republic's role in the European fintech landscape is as a proof of concept that direct-to-consumer wealth management, executed with design discipline and regulatory precision, can scale rapidly while maintaining unit economics that would make traditional brokers blush.

Founded 2015