Citigroup mistakenly credit a customer’s account with $81 trillion last year when it meant to send just $280.

The payment, which took place last April, was missed by two employees but caught 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times first reported Friday. It was reversed several hours later and reported to the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as a “near miss.”

The event is the latest mistake disclosed by the Wall Street bank, which is struggling to overcome a series of operational errors in recent years.

“Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not actually have been executed, our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts, and we reversed the entry,” Citi said in a statement to NBC News. “Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank. While there was no impact to the bank or our client, the episode underscores our continued efforts to continue eliminating manual processes and automating controls through our Transformation.”

Citi neither confirmed nor provided comment on the number of near misses it has experienced.

Near misses occur when a bank processes the wrong amount but is able to recover the funds. The bank suffered 10 near misses of $1 billion or more last year and 13 in the year prior, the according to the report.

The bank has been working to repair its reputation since it sent $900 million in error to creditors engaged in a contentious battle over the debt of cosmetics group Revlon five years ago — which led to the ousting of former CEO Michael Corbat, as well as big fines and regulatory consent orders requiring Citi to fix the issues.

Corbat’s successor, Jane Fraser, has said improving risk and controls is a top priority. The bank was still fined $136 million by regulators last year for not making enough progress on the improvements.

Market volatility appears to be boosting demand for two types of exchange-traded funds: leveraged and inverse.

And, Direxion CEO and ETF money manager Douglas Yones thinks market conditions will keep fueling demand for them.

“We have a lot of securities in the market that are … up a lot over the last five or 10 years. Market seemingly has been going sideways. We saw Friday’s correction,” he told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “There are people out there that are saying: ‘Hey, maybe I don’t want to be fully invested,’ but also don’t want to take the capital gain on selling a position. What can I do? I can take a long position in a short ETF and inverse ETF. I can basically neutralize my exposure.”

Leveraged and inverse ETFs give investors the opportunity to make monster bets on the stock market’s direction. Investors can go long or short.

Yones’ firm is heavily involved in the space. Yones runs the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares (SOXL), which is one of the largest leveraged/inverse ETFs. According to FactSet, Broadcom, Nvidia and Qualcomm are among the ETF’s top holdings.

As of Wednesday’s market close, Yones’ ETF is up almost 84% over the past two years, but off 36% over the past year. It’s also down more than 16% over the past week.

“There are market-moving headlines happening two to three times a day. And so, the volatility is growing up, not down,” said Yones. “We think that holds for the whole year.”

VettaFi’s Todd Rosenbluth also sees growing demand for single-stock leveraged ETFs.

“Single-stock leveraged ETFs probably sound hard to wrap your head around. But it’s one stock you get the risk-on or in case of inverse risk-off exposure to that and the liquidity benefits of the ETF wrapper,” the firm’s head of research said.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau‘s Trump-appointed leadership plans to fire nearly all its 1,700 employees while “winding down” the agency, according to testimony from employees.

In a trove of statements released late Thursday, federal employees said that the mass layoff was discussed in meetings they attended this month with senior CFPB leaders and members of Elon Musk‘s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

“My team was directed to assist with terminating the vast majority of CFPB employees as quickly as possible,” said an employee identified as Alex Doe, a pseudonym used out of fear of retaliation.

Doe said the plan from CFPB leaders and DOGE was to cut the bureau’s workforce in three phases. It would first eliminate probationary and term employees, then carry out a wave of about 1,200 layoffs, leaving a skeleton crew of a few hundred workers.

“Finally, the Bureau would ‘reduce altogether’ within 60-90 days by terminating most of its remaining staff,” Doe said.

The workers’ testimony comes at a crucial time for the CFPB, the agency created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis caused by irresponsible lending. Since DOGE operatives first arrived at the CFPB this month, the bureau has shuttered its Washington headquarters, initiated the first round of layoffs and told those who remain to stop nearly all work.

The department has also reversed course on several cases where it accused financial firms including Capital One of ripping off customers, dismissing at least four cases Thursday involving billions of dollars in alleged consumer harm.

The filings containing the employee statements were made in the case started by a CFPB union, which led to a judge suspending acting Director Russell Vought’s moves to shutter the bureau. After the CFPB fired about 200 probationary and term employees, the agency’s actions were put on hold until a March 3 hearing.

The documents show an apparent disconnect between some of the external messaging from Vought and the behind-the-scenes activity at the bureau.

In a motion filed Monday in the case, Vought pushed back against the idea that he planned to eliminate the CFPB.

“The predicate to running a ‘more streamlined and efficient bureau’ is that there will continue to be a CFPB,” he wrote.

But the Trump administration’s plan was to take the CFPB down to the barest minimum staffing required under law: Just five CFPB employees would remain, either in a stand-alone office or folded into another regulatory body, the workers testified.

In meetings between Feb. 18 and Feb. 25, “staff were told by Senior Executives that the CFPB would be eliminated except for the five statutorily mandated positions,” said another current CFPB employee, this one identified as Drew Doe.

“One Senior Executive said that CFPB will become a ‘room at Treasury, White House, or Federal Reserve with five men and a phone in it,'” Doe said.

Another CFPB employee said that he or she attended a Feb. 13 meeting in which the bureau’s chief operating officer, Adam Martinez, stated that the agency was in “wind-down mode.”

The CFPB employees said that, if directed to by the court, they would provide their names and titles under seal.

The bureau has long been a target of Republicans and financial institutions, who have called it a rogue agency that exceeded its legal authority in punishing companies. More recently, Musk has taken up the cause; he posted on his X platform, “RIP CFPB,” earlier this month just as his DOGE operatives began their work.

In several instances in the testimony, senior CFPB staff appeared to defer to DOGE employees for critical matters.

For instance, DOGE worker Jordan Wick “specifically stated” that Musk’s ad hoc group wanted a massive round of layoffs by Feb. 14.

“The Bureau intended to comply and fire the vast majority of remaining employees on February 14^th,” Alex Doe said. “The only reason it did not do so is because of this Court’s order.”

In other instances, DOGE workers asked CFPB staff about how deeply they could cut operations while adhering to statutory requirements in areas like consumer response, per testimony from CFPB worker Matthew Pfaff.

Despite gaining full access to CFPB systems and data on Feb. 7, the DOGE employees haven’t yet completed the cybersecurity and privacy training required by the agency, the employees testified.

While Musk and Vought have openly advocated for the termination of the CFPB, only Congress can truly shutter the agency, which was created after lawmakers passed the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

Vought’s moves appear to allow him to claim the CFPB still exists, while sidelining its role by drastically curtailing its ability to supervise companies and respond to complaints.

CFPB employees question whether a handful of employees could credibly fulfill the dozens of statutory requirements of the agency, which include responding to millions of consumer complaints filed via web and phone lines, as well as maintaining advocacy offices for military veterans and senior citizens.

On Thursday, Jonathan McKernan, President Donald Trump‘s pick to take over at the CFPB for Vought, told lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat credited with spurring the agency’s creation, that he would “fully and faithfully” enforce laws related to the CFPB’s mission.

McKernan added that if confirmed by the Senate, he would “rightsize” the CFPB, as well as “refocus it” and “make it accountable.”

Noting that Vought, who is also head of the Office of Management and Budget, has canceled the lease on the agency’s headquarters, Sen. Jack Reed, D.-R.I., told McKernan that he was in a “very difficult position.”

“You do not appear to have much presidential support or OMB support, and I have this sinking feeling that you’re departing Liverpool on the Titanic,” Reed said. “Good luck.”

The Qatar Investment Authority is leveraging its over-$500 billion in assets to attract venture capital firms to the hydrocarbon-rich state.

The sovereign wealth fund’s $1-billion fund of funds program — which invests in both international and regional VC funds — is designed to bolster investments in areas such as technology and health care, as Qatar looks to diversify away from its dominant oil and gas industry.  

Now, it’s accepted its first group of venture capital fund managers.

B Capital, a tech-focused firm led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, is among the group of VCs set to launch in Doha, opening its first Middle East office in the Qatari capital. It joins Rasmal Ventures, Utopia Capital Management and Builders VC, which have also joined the program.

Raj Ganguly, co-CEO of B Capital, hailed the Gulf state’s approach to artificial intelligence, and its support for the sector, as of particular interest.

“With all the sandboxes that have been created here in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) to trial new types of AI, we think it’s an incredibly exciting time,” Ganguly told CNBC at Web Summit Qatar in Doha on Monday. “We believe innovation can come from anywhere. We want to back founders from the GCC who have a global mindset.”

B Capital, which focuses on enterprise, fintech, health care and climate investments, has over $7 billion in assets under management and says it targets seed to late-stage growth technology investments.

Mohsin Pirzada, head of funds at QIA – a huge sovereign wealth fund with stakes in prize assets ranging from London’s Harrods to Heathrow Airport — told CNBC that the program has a dual investment mandate.

“Firstly, we seek strong commercial returns and secondly, we seek for positive impact across the VC ecosystem in Qatar,” he said.

He added that the fund of funds was looking for VCs looking to deepen their roots in the country. It aims to “have a beneficial impact on the local economy, to boost deal flow in the market and to support the development of a thriving ecosystem underpinned by a strong private sector,” he added.

The move comes as Doha faces a particular challenge in attracting financial services firms. In addition to boasting a young, digital-savvy population, many countries in the Middle East also offer incentives to lure storied financial services firms.

Riyadh, for example, has launched a program requiring any company that seeks government contracts to move its regional headquarters to Saudi Arabia, offering corporate tax incentives. The Kingdom has seen several Wall Street firms move to the Saudi capital as a result, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Lazard and BlackRock.

The UAE is also targeting global firms, with billionaire Ray Dalio, hedge fund Brevan Howard, asset manager PGIM and private equity giant General Atlantic all setting up offices in capital Abu Dhabi.

“The key word here is ‘compliment’ — this is a relatively small region, so when one country wins, we all win. If we are all attracting businesses, innovators and helping companies to scale, we will all benefit,” the QIA’s Pirzada told CNBC.

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday withstood grilling from Democrat senators who repeatedly asked him to confirm that he would uphold his legal obligations to run the agency.

Pressed by senators including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Jonathan McKernan, a former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation board member, told lawmakers he would “fully and faithfully” enforce laws related to the CFPB’s mission.

“My legal career started just as the 2008 financial crisis was beginning,” McKernan said. “Watching that crisis unfold left me with an enduring conviction that we must have a financial regulatory system that works for everyday Americans. Consumer protection is critical to that end.”

Still, McKernan made it clear that he disagreed with how predecessor Rohit Chopra ran the agency. In opening remarks, he said that the CFPB “acted in a politicized manner,” exceeded its legal authority, hurt consumers by inadvertently raising prices and suffered from a “crisis of legitimacy.”

“This must be corrected if the CFPB is to reliably do what it’s supposed to do: look out for the American consumer,” said McKernan, a former corporate banking lawyer and Senate aide.

Since acting CFPB Director Russell Vought took over this month, the agency has shuttered its Washington headquarters, fired about 200 employees and told those who remain to stop nearly all work. Those moves, along with an allegation from a CFPB union that Vought intends to fire more than 95% of the agency’s staff, has spurred fears that the agency faces extinction.

Earlier Thursday, the CFPB dismissed at least four enforcement lawsuits, including actions against Capital One and a Berkshire Hathaway unit.

Warren pressed McKernan on if he would uphold CFPB’s statutory requirements, including having a website and toll-free line for consumer complaints, as well as maintaining advocacy offices for military veterans and senior citizens.

“Each of the offices I think you mentioned is mandated by statute,” McKernan said. “Yes, I’ll follow the law.”

Rattling off a list of public comments and steps made by the Trump administration that indicate the bureau could be shuttered entirely, Warren questioned how effective McKernan could be.

“It kind of feels like you’ve been lined up to be the No. 1 horse at the glue factory,” Warren said.

For his part, McKernan said that if confirmed by the Senate, he would “right-size” the CFPB, as well as “refocus it” and “make it accountable.”

Sen. Jack Reed, D.-R.I., followed up, adding that Vought has canceled the lease on the agency’s headquarters and dismissed cases against “predatory lenders.” Reed also mentioned reporting that both Trump and Vought, who is also head of the Office of Management and Budget, want to eliminate the bureau.

“You’re going to be placed in a very difficult position,” Reed said. “You do not appear to have much presidential support or OMB support, and I have this sinking feeling that you’re departing Liverpool on the Titanic. Good luck.”

McKernan didn’t verbally respond to Reed’s comment, only smiling ruefully while nodding slightly.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau‘s new leadership on Thursday dismissed at least four enforcement lawsuits undertaken by the previous administration’s director.

In legal filings, the CFPB issued a notice of voluntary dismissal for cases involving Capital One; Berkshire Hathaway-owned Vanderbilt Mortgage & Finance; a Rocket Cos. unit called Rocket Homes Real Estate; and a loan servicer named Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency.

“The Plaintiff, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, dismisses with prejudice this action against all Defendants,” the agency said in the Capital One case. It used similar language in the other cases.

The moves are the latest sign of the abrupt shift at the agency since acting CFPB director Russell Vought took over this month. In conjunction with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the CFPB has shuttered its Washington headquarters, fired about 200 employees and told those who remain to stop nearly all work.

Current and former CFPB employees have told CNBC that legal cases with upcoming docket dates would likely be dismissed as the agency disavows most of what previous director Rohit Chopra has done.

That began late last week, when the agency dismissed its case against SoLo Funds, a fintech lender it had earlier accused of gouging customers.

The Thursday filings began appearing at the same time that senators were grilling Jonathan McKernan, President Trump’s pick to lead the CFPB on a permanent basis, during a nomination hearing.

“Mr. McKernan, literally while you’ve been sitting here and you’ve been talking about the importance of following the law, we get the news that the CFPB is dropping lawsuits against companies that are cheating American families, or alleged to be cheating American families,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.

“It seems to me the timing of that announcement is designed to embarrass you,” Warren said.

This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

BEIJING — Chip giant Nvidia has flagged heightened competition from Huawei, despite U.S. restrictions on the Chinese telecommunications company.

In an annual filing Wednesday, Nvidia listed Huawei among its current competitors, including it in the list for a second straight year. The company, blacklisted by the U.S. for national security reasons, did not feature among Nvidia’s competitors for at least three prior years.

Nvidia listed Huawei among its competitors in four of five categories, including chips, cloud services, computing processing and networking products.

“There’s a fair amount of competition in China,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC’s Jon Fortt Wednesday.

“Huawei, other companies, are … quite vigorous and very, very competitive,” Huang said.

Since 2019, the U.S. has restricted Huawei’s ability to access technology from American suppliers, from advanced 5G chips to Google’s Android operating system.

Huawei’s revenue exceeded 860 billion yuan ($118.27 billion) in 2024, state media reported, a 22% jump in revenue from 2023, and the fastest growth since a 32% increase in 2016, according to CNBC calculations of publicly released figures. Huawei typically publishes its annual reports in March.

The company’s revenue barely grew in 2020, and plunged by nearly 29% in 2021. Its consumer segment was hit hard, and even as revenue rose 17% year on year to 251.5 billion yuan in 2023, it was just over half of what the unit generated at its peak in 2020.

The telecommunications company started to make a comeback in the smartphone market in 2023 with the release of its Mate 60 Pro in China. Reviews indicated the device offers download speeds associated with 5G — thanks to an advanced semiconductor chip.

Just over a year later, Huawei launched the Mate 70 smartphone series that uses the company’s first fully self-developed operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT.

Democrat lawmakers led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday held a forum pushing back against the moves that the Trump administration and Elon Musk have taken to neutralize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Guests at the event included a retired military veteran helped by the agency, a mortgage broker who said the CFPB has helped curb industry abuses, and the bureau’s former head for supervision.

But the focus of the senators’ attention was Elon Musk, the driving force behind the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. While Musk was invited to the Washington, D.C, event, according to Warren, he didn’t make an appearance.

The lawmakers questioned whether Musk was conflicted in his efforts to dismantle the CFPB, highlighting his recent plan to launch a digital payments service within X, the social media network he owns.

“By seizing control of the agency, Musk can now root through all of the CFPB’s confidential data that DOGE has accessed on these potential competitors,” Warren said. “As Musk launches his new app, he faces oversight from the CFPB. His plan seems to be to eliminate the watchdog.”

A representative for Musk and X didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

Earlier this month, operatives from DOGE gained access to CFPB systems, shortly before the bureau’s new leadership shuttered the agency’s headquarters, froze nearly all activities and laid off roughly 200 employees. A CFPB union has alleged in a lawsuit that acting CFPB Director Russell Vought intends to fire more than 95% of the agency’s staff.

“Elon, how do you justify shutting down the agency that’s going to be looking at your peer-to-peer payment plan?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D.-Minn., asked rhetorically during the hearing Tuesday. “How do you justify shutting down the agency that has jurisdiction and oversight over many of the other financial issues that you are going to make money from doing?”

Responding to a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D.-Md., about what Musk could do with CFPB data, Lorelei Salas, the former CFPB supervision director, said the regulator kept “very sensitive trade secret information,” including from payments services PayPal, CashApp and Zelle, as well as online lenders.

“We’ve been looking at a number of digital wallet companies, payments companies, and we have information… on the technologies that they’re using,” Salas said. “We have information on the secret sauce of the credit models that people used with artificial intelligence to make decisions about whether you get a loan or not.”

Late last year, the CFPB took steps to supervise tech giants and payments firms that dominate the market, including Apple and PayPal, and sued the operator of the Zelle payments network and the three biggest U.S. banks using it for allegedly failing to properly investigate fraud complaints.

Besides confidential data on companies examined by the CFPB, the agency has “very sensitive data” from consumers filing complaints, Salas added. Consumers often leave account numbers and other personal data in their complaints, agency sources have said.

Now, with the CFPB and its employees in a state of limbo, the question is how far Musk and Vought can take their campaign to minimize the watchdog. A federal judge has halted their efforts, saying that they cannot fire employees or purge bureau data for the time being.

“The CFPB has been sidelined, but it is not dead,” Warren said, asserting that only Congress can shut down the bureau. “Advocates are in court right now asking judges to enforce the law, and I am confident they are going to win.”

BEIJING — For someone who’s lived in China since before the pandemic, the success of the animated film “Ne Zha 2” marks more of an industry milestone than a surprise.

The steady drumbeat of homegrown animation had picked up in 2023, just after the end of Covid-19 restrictions, with popular releases such as “Chang An” — a re-telling of Chinese poet Li Bai’s life from the perspective of his friend. It raked in about $250 million as the only animated film in China’s top 10 movies for the year, according to box office data from Maoyan.

The team behind “Chang An,” Light Chaser Animation, works largely out of an old white building in the sleepy outskirts of Beijing. The ceilings are high; stairs wind through the building to connect multiple floors and rooms — and a gym.

When I visited this week, some animators — working on their computers in the dark — were racing to finish cinematic lighting effects on scenes for this summer’s movie. Others designed historical Chinese robes, detailed eyebrows and re-created buildings.

“This place is no longer big enough,” Yu Zhou, president of the studio, said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

He said the 380-person company needs to hire at least 100 more people in the next year to keep up with its new production plan: two movie releases annually starting from 2026, up from one a year currently. AI, he said, can only be a tool for now. Light Chaser plans to move to a new office in the second half of this year.

The studio sticks to a three-year production plan for all the movies it’s making simultaneously. It tries to imagine the future, and whether 20 million to 30 million people will watch it when the movie comes out, Yu said. “Will this story work in three years?”

This film slated for this summer, “Curious Tales of a Temple,” re-tells “Chinese ghost stories,” Yu said. The studio is in talks with “Hollywood mainstream players” for releasing the movie in theaters overseas, including in North America, at the same time as the planned China launch, he said.

Alluding to the studio’s appeal among global audiences, Yu claimed Light Chaser’s “Green Snake” — which is a rendition of a Chinese legend sets it partially in a futuristic city — did well on Netflix after its 2021 launch, remaining in the top 10 non-English content for three weeks.

Among the other animated features in the works, video-streaming company iQiyi is developing “Master Zhong” that’s expected to be released in China this year. Ya Ning, a senior vice president at the firm, said Chinese animation had started to break its “childish” image and was turning into an industry, expanding into movie merchandise and games as well.

Chinese animated films have only started to make a splash in the last 10 years.

“In the history of Chinese animation, there has never been a film like “Big Fish and Begonia.” … as far as the Chinese industry goes, this bold and breathtaking fantasy adventure stands alone,” entertainment industry magazine Variety wrote after the movie’s 2016 release.

The film was made by Beijing Enlight Media. That’s the same producer behind this year’s “Ne Zha 2” and “Ne Zha 1” that came out in 2019 — it had topped China’s box office that year.

“Deep Sea,” from Beijing studio OctMedia, won acclaim in early 2023 with its fantastical pastel-colored rendering of a young girl’s journey of healing following her mother’s abandonment.

While popularity hasn’t always turned into box office sales, “Ne Zha 2” was able to succeed in part because it appealed to all ages, Liu Anxing, manager at a movie theater in Chengdu, told CNBC. While Liu said he was proud of Chinese animation industry’s achievements, he didn’t expect another “Ne Zha 2”-like blockbuster in the near future — at least not until “Ne Zha 3” comes out in 2028.

“Ne Zha 2” came out in China in late January as one of six movies for the week-long Spring Festival holiday — and took half the box office for the period, according to Maoyan. After its release in North America on Feb. 14, Maoyan data showed the movie beat Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” as the top-grossing animated film worldwide with more than 13 billion yuan ($1.79 billion) in ticket sales.

In contrast to Light Chaser’s focus on in-house production, the makers of “Ne Zha 2” relied on various studios. The director came from Chengdu-based Coco Cartoon, while Beijing Enlight Media was the primary producer and distributor. Chinese state media said nearly 140 businesses contributed to the production.

State media also highlighted how government subsidies from Chengdu to Qingdao have helped support domestic animation. Beijing in 2021 laid out a national plan for “building China into a major cinematic player” by 2035 that included a call for producing 50 films a year with box-office sales of at least 100 million yuan each.

Jonathan Clements, author of “Anime: A History,” cautioned that over-production of films could unpleasantly shock studios and investors. “Animation consumers are themselves a resource that needs to be carefully managed,” he said.

Clements added that in contrast to how Disney blockbusters made more than $1 billion in box office sales across multiple countries, “Ne Zha 2” has done so primarily due to sales in China. “You don’t have to worry about whether your story, or your characters, or your attitudes will play in other countries.”

China’s plan also specified that domestic films should account for at least 55% of the country’s annual box office sales.

Hollywood films, when allowed into China, have seen waning interest from domestic audiences. “Godzilla x Kong” was the only one to crack the top 10 last year, according to Maoyan. “Oppenheimer” failed to enter China’s 20 top-grossing movies in 2023, and “Barbie” was even further behind.

Back in 2019, “Avengers: Endgame” ranked third by domestic box office, according to Maoyan, just behind Chinese sci-fi sensation “The Wandering Earth” and the first “Ne Zha” film.

The characters and plots of many Chinese animated television series have come from stories written online by relatively unknown authors. China Literature, the operator of a major app for user-generated content, said 15 of the top 20 most watched online animated series in the first half of last year were based off content on its platform — in the last few years it’s also started putting the adaptations on YouTube as it strives to broaden its audience.

Chinese creators are also leveraging generative AI for filmmaking. Short-video streaming app Kuaishou is releasing a seven-part mini series, “New World Loading,” that’s largely created using the company’s Kling AI for video generation. Director Chen Xiangyu said the team just fed the AI model simple scripts, instead of having to draw characters.

For the third year in a row, CNBC is working with market research firm Statista to list the world’s top financial technology companies.

Including startups, scaleups and established tech players, the top global fintech list aims to assess companies using an objective, key performance indicator-based methodology.

You can find out more information on the research project and methodology by clicking here.

Applications are now open for companies to register their information for consideration by Statista’s researchers. To qualify, a company must focus primarily on developing innovative, technology-based financial products and services.

This year, we’re also digging deeper into the research to name the standout companies operating in the U.K. — the largest fintech market in Europe, as measured by the amount of funding raised.

Applications from companies headquartered in the U.K. will — in addition to being considered for the global fintech list — also be considered for a separate list of the U.K.’s top fintech companies. Firms do not need to fill in a separate application to be considered for the U.K. ranking.

Last year, fintech startups in the U.K. raised $3.6 billion in venture capital, ranking second worldwide and first in Europe for funding, according to industry trade body Innovate Finance. The country is also home to Revolut, Europe’s biggest fintech unicorn with a $45 billion valuation.

Companies can submit their information for consideration by clicking here. The form, hosted by Statista, includes questions about a company’s business model and certain key performance indicators, including revenue growth and employee headcount.

The deadline for submissions is April 25, 2025.

If you have any questions about the lists or need assistance filling out the form, please reach out to Statista: topfintechs@statista.com.

Successful companies will be listed in the category that most closely reflects their business model. This year, insurance technology will be included as a category in the global fintech list. The other categories are payments, neobanking, digital assets, alternative financing, wealth technology, and enterprise fintech.

You can check out last year’s list here, which included well-known brands such as Mastercard and China’s Ant Group, global unicorns such as Brazilian digital lender Nubank and buy now, pay later firm Klarna, as well as smaller disruptors including payments platform Primer and investing app Stash.