Top 5 fintech IPOs of 2025

Chime Financial Debuts Initial Public Offering At Nasdaq MarketSite
Ryan King, Chime co-founder, center; Chris Britt, Chime co-founder and CEO, center right
Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

Fintech IPOs made a major comeback in 2025 after waiting through a capital markets freeze, early year tariff uncertainty and a fintech slump in 2023.

Processing Content

A report from Forge Global stated that "the fintech sector has experienced renewed momentum" and "was also bolstered by favorable regulatory signals, including the Trump administration signaling that it will loosen restrictions on both crypto operations and traditional banks."

Fintechs also boosted an overall IPO increase this year. Stock Analysis tracked 347 IPOs on the U.S. stock market in 2025 as of this week, a 54.91% increase over 2024. Of those, according to Crunchbase, two of the largest four IPOs of the year were from fintech companies Chime and Klarna.

The U.S. government shutdown late this year cooled the IPO streak, but 2026 could see another uptick in U.S. fintech IPOs according to IPO research firm Renaissance Capital. Its 2026 Outlook reported that "more crypto and fintech names have indicated plans to list, including UK-based neobank Revolut, crypto exchange Kraken, and Japan-based payment app PayPay."

Here are American Banker's top five fintech IPO stories of 2025:

Chime

Chime CEO Christopher Britt at Nasdaq podium with company logo in background
Christopher Britt
Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

Chime's initial public offering tested the waters for other fintechs considering going public in 2025. Chime Financial's shares surged 59% in its Nasdaq debut in June, valuing the digital bank at $18.4 billion. Chime's stock opened at $43 compared with the IPO price of $27. It has since gone back to around $27 as of Monday.

"We are excited to see Chime tap the public markets at a pivotal moment after weathering the capital markets deep freeze that has paralyzed fintech IPOs," Pitchbook senior analyst Rudy Yang told American Banker at the time of Chime's initial filing. "The timing is undoubtedly bold, but it is a strategic play that balances opportunity with calculated risk. A strong reception may help catalyze a long-awaited revival in fintech liquidity." 

Fintech venture capital exit value from IPOs dropped from $222.4 billion in 2021 to $29.1 billion across the subsequent three years and through the first quarter of 2025, Yang said.

Read more about Chime's IPO here.

Klarna

Klarna, Backers Raise $1.37 Billion In Oversubscribed IPO
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, chief executive officer and co-founder of Klarna
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

The Swedish buy now/pay later payments company Klarna confidentially listed with the SEC in November 2024 and made its S-1 filing public in March of this year. Klarna reported a net profit of $21 million in 2024, compared to a loss of $244 million the prior year.

Investors anticipated Klarna's IPO for several years, and the listing could signal a recovery in the broader payments technology market, which slumped in 2022 and 2023 following a fintech bubble during the Covid-19 pandemic's rush to digital commerce.

After a five-month delay, Klarna began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 10 under the ticker KLAR. Shares were priced at $40 per share, netting the company a $15 billion valuation. The listing cemented the return of a healthy IPO market beleaguered by Donald Trump's tariff policy. 

Read more about Klarna's IPO here.

Circle

Circle IPO
Jeremy Allaire, chief executive officer of Circle
Bloomberg

Blockchain and digital currency company Circle filed its S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in April, looking to raise up to $642 million through the sale of 24 million shares of Class A common stock at a share price of $24 to $26 per share.

The share price put Circle's valuation at around $6 billion, larger than the $5 billion price tag that Coinbase and Ripple were seeking to pay to acquire the company, according to Reuters.

On the day of the stablecoin issuer's public debut on the NYSE under the ticker CRCL, shares of Circle tripled in value to as high as $95.98 in the first hour of trading, suggesting robust investor appetite for the burgeoning cryptocurrency and stablecoin industries. Circle's shares are currently trading at around $80 per share.

Read more about Circle's IPO here.

Wealthfront

Wealthfront IPO At The Nasdaq MarketSite
David Fortunato, chief executive officer of Wealthfront
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

The wealth management fintech Wealthfront filed a confidential IPO in June on the heels of Chime and Circle, and publicized the filing in late September, right before the U.S. government shutdown.

The shutdown impacted the company's IPO timeline, as the SEC was affected by Congress' failure to meet the deadline of midnight on Oct. 1 to approve a new budget for federal funding.

"The shutdown has the immediate impact of damaging investor sentiment now and the longer-term effect of clogging the IPO pipe," Samuel Kerr, head of equity capital markets for Mergermarket, told American Banker at the time. "This shutdown could hardly have come at a worse time for the IPO market."

Read more about Wealthfront's IPO here.

Lendbuzz

Lendbuzz team stands in expo hall behind standing desk with company logo
Lendbuzz team
Lendbuzz

The auto lending fintech Lendbuzz filed for an IPO in September of this year, but has not yet announced the amount of common stock to be offered or the price range. Lendbuzz is targeting a valuation of around $1.5 billion, as originally reported by CNBC.

Lendbuzz underwrites auto loans for "underserved consumers" with limited to no traditional credit history as well as for consumers with FICO scores, according to its filing, and mentioned immigration policy concerns among its potential risk factors. The company did not disclose how many of its customers are not U.S. citizens, but it did state that "as of December 31, 2024, 83% of our consumers have no credit file or a thin credit file."

Lendbuzz's IPO came into the auto lending market shortly after a different auto lender, Tricolor, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy due to alleged fraud. Tricolor is a subprime auto lender that carved out a niche in lending to undocumented Hispanic immigrants looking to buy used cars.

Read more about Lendbuzz's IPO here.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
IPOs Fintech CHIME Buy now pay later Stablecoin Wealth management Auto lending
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER