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February 14, 2024

Valentine’s Day Special: An inside look at why our investment team loves fintech

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This month QED Investors celebrated its 16th anniversary. After investing in more than 225 companies across 19 geographies and five continents, it’s clear that fintech has a special place in our hearts. We might go as far as saying we love fintech.

While the numbers speak for themselves, our investment team can’t miss out on an opportunity to share the reasons why they love financial technology. So, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, here’s a look into why we’re so committed to fintech.

Frank Rotman, co-founder, partner and Chief Investment Officer

A special fintech poem:

F - Financial empowerment: Fintech provides tools and services that empower individuals to take control of their finances.

I - Innovation: Fintech is at the forefront of technological innovation, constantly introducing new solutions to enhance financial experiences.

N - Nimble: Fintech companies are often agile and adaptable, able to respond quickly to changing market demands and customer needs.

T - Transparency: Fintech platforms often promote transparency in financial transactions, providing users with clear insights into their finances.

E - Efficiency: Fintech streamlines processes and reduces bureaucracy, making financial tasks quicker and more convenient.

C - Convenience: Fintech offers users the convenience of managing their finances anytime, anywhere, through digital platforms and mobile apps.

H - Harnessing data: Fintech leverages data analytics to offer personalized financial solutions and insights tailored to individual needs.

Victoria Zuo, Principal

"Financial services is the connective tissue between industries and one of the most under-disrupted revenue pools. I'm excited about what technology can do to smooth out the flow of capital and how fintech is changing how people shop, save and spend while providing greater access and equality to consumers."

Shruti Batra, Principal

"I love the power that fintech platforms have in financial inclusion and democratizing access to financial products. From investing in the stock market to moving money, financial technology makes financial tools more accessible and solves everyday problems for millions of people."

Alex Taub, Principal

"What I love most about fintech is its unique ability to drive positive technological disruption while generating social impact."

Bill Cilluffo, Partner, Head of Early-Stage Investments

"I love how fintech is allowing millions of people in emerging markets to use eCommerce and gain access to all sorts of products and services they never had access to before.  And those same tools allow small businesses to grow to both better serve their customers and improve the living of the small business owners.  Fintech helps in these areas in developed markets as well, but the emerging market impact is so dramatic and easy to see the positive impact on people and their communities."

Laura Bock, Partner

"I love fintech for two reasons, the first being that fintech promotes greater accessibility and equity for financial products and services through tech-enabled gains in efficiency and better customer experiences in a sector that suffers from some of the lowest ratings.

"In addition to driving inclusion and innovation, fintech is becoming more embedded as it expands its tentacles into different types of businesses: customers want contextual offerings, and – with new tools – financial services can more easily be natively integrated into the customer journey of a non-financial enterprise."

Mel Ho, Principal

"I love fintech because it empowers and uplifts billions across the globe, especially in markets and communities that are most underserved. Fintech can be omnipresent and far-reaching and, therefore, will help supercharge innovation in all other verticals too."

Gbenga Ajayi, Partner, Head of Africa

"I love fintech because it’s bridging the gap in financial inclusion, globally. Fintech enables serving underserved consumers and businesses that are traditionally overlooked."

Mike Packer, Partner, Head of LaTam

"I love how fintech touches all corners of the economy and can truly make an impact – how consumers transact, how SMBs manage their finances and how enterprises build new products are all impacted by what is happening in fintech.

"I also love that fintech gets to leverage the latest technology trends – there was a huge data revolution and a wave of opportunities with mobile and cloud and today we’re talking about the AI impact on fintech. What’s next??"

Adams Conrad, Principal

"C.R.E.A.M.- cash rules everything around me. Fintech presents such a tremendous opportunity to help people and businesses improve how they interact with money. I'm celebrating this Valentine’s Day by listening to Wu-Tang Clan and working on ways to make money better for everyone."

Ale Piedrahita, Principal

"What I love most about fintech is the potential for impact - money flows dictate how the world goes around. If you think about fintech as a horizontal category, helping every business and consumer around the world transact, the opportunities are limitless."

What do you love about fintech? Reach out on LinkedIn or Twitter and let us know.

This month QED Investors celebrated its 16th anniversary. After investing in more than 225 companies across 19 geographies and five continents, it’s clear that fintech has a special place in our hearts. We might go as far as saying we love fintech.

While the numbers speak for themselves, our investment team can’t miss out on an opportunity to share the reasons why they love financial technology. So, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, here’s a look into why we’re so committed to fintech.

Frank Rotman, co-founder, partner and Chief Investment Officer

A special fintech poem:

F - Financial empowerment: Fintech provides tools and services that empower individuals to take control of their finances.

I - Innovation: Fintech is at the forefront of technological innovation, constantly introducing new solutions to enhance financial experiences.

N - Nimble: Fintech companies are often agile and adaptable, able to respond quickly to changing market demands and customer needs.

T - Transparency: Fintech platforms often promote transparency in financial transactions, providing users with clear insights into their finances.

E - Efficiency: Fintech streamlines processes and reduces bureaucracy, making financial tasks quicker and more convenient.

C - Convenience: Fintech offers users the convenience of managing their finances anytime, anywhere, through digital platforms and mobile apps.

H - Harnessing data: Fintech leverages data analytics to offer personalized financial solutions and insights tailored to individual needs.

Victoria Zuo, Principal

"Financial services is the connective tissue between industries and one of the most under-disrupted revenue pools. I'm excited about what technology can do to smooth out the flow of capital and how fintech is changing how people shop, save and spend while providing greater access and equality to consumers."

Shruti Batra, Principal

"I love the power that fintech platforms have in financial inclusion and democratizing access to financial products. From investing in the stock market to moving money, financial technology makes financial tools more accessible and solves everyday problems for millions of people."

Alex Taub, Principal

"What I love most about fintech is its unique ability to drive positive technological disruption while generating social impact."

Bill Cilluffo, Partner, Head of Early-Stage Investments

"I love how fintech is allowing millions of people in emerging markets to use eCommerce and gain access to all sorts of products and services they never had access to before.  And those same tools allow small businesses to grow to both better serve their customers and improve the living of the small business owners.  Fintech helps in these areas in developed markets as well, but the emerging market impact is so dramatic and easy to see the positive impact on people and their communities."

Laura Bock, Partner

"I love fintech for two reasons, the first being that fintech promotes greater accessibility and equity for financial products and services through tech-enabled gains in efficiency and better customer experiences in a sector that suffers from some of the lowest ratings.

"In addition to driving inclusion and innovation, fintech is becoming more embedded as it expands its tentacles into different types of businesses: customers want contextual offerings, and – with new tools – financial services can more easily be natively integrated into the customer journey of a non-financial enterprise."

Mel Ho, Principal

"I love fintech because it empowers and uplifts billions across the globe, especially in markets and communities that are most underserved. Fintech can be omnipresent and far-reaching and, therefore, will help supercharge innovation in all other verticals too."

Gbenga Ajayi, Partner, Head of Africa

"I love fintech because it’s bridging the gap in financial inclusion, globally. Fintech enables serving underserved consumers and businesses that are traditionally overlooked."

Mike Packer, Partner, Head of LaTam

"I love how fintech touches all corners of the economy and can truly make an impact – how consumers transact, how SMBs manage their finances and how enterprises build new products are all impacted by what is happening in fintech.

"I also love that fintech gets to leverage the latest technology trends – there was a huge data revolution and a wave of opportunities with mobile and cloud and today we’re talking about the AI impact on fintech. What’s next??"

Adams Conrad, Principal

"C.R.E.A.M.- cash rules everything around me. Fintech presents such a tremendous opportunity to help people and businesses improve how they interact with money. I'm celebrating this Valentine’s Day by listening to Wu-Tang Clan and working on ways to make money better for everyone."

Ale Piedrahita, Principal

"What I love most about fintech is the potential for impact - money flows dictate how the world goes around. If you think about fintech as a horizontal category, helping every business and consumer around the world transact, the opportunities are limitless."

What do you love about fintech? Reach out on LinkedIn or Twitter and let us know.

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01

Settlement Collapse

Value transfer moves from days - corresponding banking, T+1 securities - to seconds. Working capital tied up in float is released.

02

Cost Collapse

Marginal transaction cost approaches zero: fractions of a cent, versus 1-6% on card and corresponding rails.

03

Programmability

Money becomes an object that carries logic - escrow, splits, rebates, compliance - executed by code, not back offices.

Pure infrastructure with no revenue accrual

Layer-1 chains and general-purpose middleware — outside our circle of competence and typically outside our stage.

Speculative asset creation

NFT platforms, memecoins, prediction markets styled as products — mapping to none of the five functions; structurally uninvestable for us.

Three structural truths cut across all five functions.

(a)

Regulated-first wins

The 2020/21 cycle proved permissionless purity does not survive contact with real financial regulation. GENIUS, MiCA, CLARITY and the UK/Singapore regimes are producing founders who start from “how do we get licensed” and build backwards — precisely the founder profile QED has always preferred.
(b)

Incumbents upgraded, not disintermediated

JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are jointly building a tokenized-deposit network; Visa launched a stablecoin platform in July 2026; 140+ businesses signed an open stablecoin standard. Banks migrate — and new-generation infrastructure companies own the picks and shovels of that migration.
(c)

Emerging markets feel it first

Every function improves most where the fiat experience is worst: cross-border payments, dollar access, investment product availability, working-capital finance. Those are exactly the geographies where QED has fintech ventures’ deepest footprint. Our geographic distribution is not incidental to the tokenization thesis — it is the thesis.

Trade & working-capital finance

Finkargo( LatAm import finance) and OatFi(B2B working-capital infrastructure) sit directly on flows whose logical settlement layer is stablecoin.

Collateralized digital-asset lending

Tokenized Treasuries, equities and stablecoin holdings as instant, programmable collateral.

On-chain private credt

Maple, Centrifuge and emerging institutional protocols - credit funds migrating to programmable rails.

Why QED is advanced

Credit is QED's craft: distinguishing lending businesses from fintechs pretending to be one, charge-offs earned from charge-offs deferred. On-chain credit is a straight-line extension, not a stretch.