JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citi are Wall Street's

A version of this article first appeared in Business Insider on September 18, 2020 (link).

jamie dimon, the chief executive of jpmorgan.

Funding in financial technology (fintechs) companies decreased in 2020 amid economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic. However, Venture Capitals (VCs) and investment banks alike are still looking for the next big thing in the digital finance ecosystem.

Since 2012, bulge bracket banks Goldman Sachs, Citi, and JPMorgan are the most active investors of fintechs. And in 2020, they’re making bets on segments seeing a boost with the accelerated shift toward digital finance.

Across the board, US banks have invested in 40 fintech deals so far this year, following 66 total deals in 2019, according to CB Insights data.

Both Goldman and Citi have separate investment arms for these deals — GS Growth and Citi Ventures. Meanwhile, JPMorgan has the largest reported tech budget of US banks at $11.4 billion in 2019 and a streamlined process to evaluate fintechs.

While VCs and banks are hoping for high returns on their startup bets, banks also invest when there’s an opportunity for a strategic partnership. JPMorgan, for example, partnered with Trovata.io and Square Inc. to reinvent user experience, exchange of bank data, and automating treasury workflow on a platform to provide the Square Treasury team financial data in real-time utilizing JPMorgan’s Treasury Services APIs.

Much of the banks’ fintech deals fall into the capital markets category, investing in companies focused on digitizing and automating trading. And that’s held true in 2020, with the banks mainly investing in capital markets, wealth and asset management, and small-business focused fintech.

Here’s the list of fintechs that Wall Street’s three biggest investors have put money into this year: