Thousands of miles removed from the world’s great financial centers, Los Angeles has nurtured a community of developers and entrepreneurs experimenting with new notions at the intersection of finance and tech.
The city’s enthusiastic and growing fintech circuit has produced some remarkable new ideas and successful startups in payments, lending, crowdfunding, cryptocurrency and more. Here are a few mainstays, big players and up-and-comers you should know going in.
Top Fintech Startups in LA
- Tala
- FloQast
- Albert
- Smarkets
- Earny
- Acorns
- StockShield
- PennyMac
Top Fintech Startups in Los Angeles
Services: Credit Building and Microloans
What they do: Lenny Credit is a Santa Monica-based fintech platform that helps millennials build credit scores by offering small credit lines with transparent rates. Founded to address the gap in credit history for young adults, Lenny Credit allows borrowers to access up to $1,000 instantly and earn rewards by making on-time payments. The platform provides free monthly FICO scores, financial education resources and personalized credit card recommendations, with credit lines currently available to California residents.
Services: Peer-to-Peer transfers and Bitcoin Investing
What they do: Cash App offers a financial services platform that enables users to send and receive funds, invest in stocks and Bitcoin and save with interest-bearing accounts. The app supports peer-to-peer payments through customizable handles called “$Cashtags” for users who prefer privacy. Cash App also integrates Bitcoin‘s Lightning Network, a second-layer payment protocol that enables faster, lower-cost transactions and allows users to send dollars and receive Bitcoin instantly.
Services: Financial and Investing Software
What they do: InvestCloud operates a unified wealth management platform that connects financial professionals and private investors. Through its core APL engine, the system processes high-volume managed accounts, data management services and front-office workflows for registered investment advisors and asset managers. The platform also integrates the Altic network, enabling financial institutions to manage private market investments across the complete portfolio lifecycle.
Services: Microloans and Credit Scoring
What they do: Tala delivers digital credit services across emerging markets in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Its platform uses AI underwriting and behavioral data to evaluate consumers who lack traditional banking histories or formal credit files. By analyzing alternative data from smartphone usage, Tala provides underbanked individuals with access to working capital and credit-building tools.
Services: Equity Crowdfunding
What they do: FlashFunders facilitates corporate fundraising through an online engine that connects startups with global investors under established equity crowdfunding frameworks. Its platform structures investment rounds by pairing digital fundraising tools with broker-dealer services compliant with Regulation A+, Regulation D and Regulation CF rules. Through automated connections to legal databases, the system generates required compliance documentation and manages investor verification within a unified workflow.
Services: Embedded Financial Services
What they do: Green Dot Corporation operates a financial technology platform and embedded finance network serving consumers and businesses. The company manages prepaid debit card services through partnerships with major retailers. Green Dot’s B2B Services segment provides embedded finance solutions through its Arc platform and rapid! earned wage access services.
Services: Investing
What they do: Acorns is a financial technology app that automatically invests spare change from everyday purchases into a diversified portfolio. The platform helps individuals and families build wealth through micro-investing, with more than 14 million all-time customers having invested over $30 billion since its inception. Based in Irvine, Acorns also provides robo-advisory services alongside its core investment functionality.
Services: Refund Tracking
What they do: Earny automates consumer price protection by continuously scanning user receipts for post-purchase price drops. The software then files refund requests directly with retailers, eliminating the need for shoppers to manually track deals or initiate claims. In exchange for securing these price adjustments, the platform retains a 25 percent commission on all recovered funds.
Services: Compliance and Operations Automation
What they do: Spring Labs builds compliance and operations platforms for financial institutions. The company deploys agentic AI to automate compliance workflows, customer experience analysis and quality assurance across contact centers and back-office operations. Spring Labs’ agents handle tasks like complaint detection and categorization, call scoring against compliance scorecards and customer interaction summarization — enabling financial institutions to scale compliance operations without proportional headcount increases.
Services: Personal Finance and Budgeting Advisor
What they do: Albert is a fintech app that helps users manage their finances through automated tracking of income, spending habits and bills. The platform offers personalized financial guidance and connects paid subscribers to real financial advisers through its Genius feature, to help address questions about overdrafts, debt reduction insurance and family planning.
Services: Government and Non-Profit Financial Advisory
What they do: BLX Group advises public sector entities, nonprofits, higher education institutions and healthcare organizations on public finance and regulatory compliance. The firm manages complex financial requirements by focusing on arbitrage rebate calculations, continuing disclosure obligations and post-issuance compliance frameworks. Through its advisory services, BLX Group helps clients navigate municipal bond regulations and maintain ongoing accountability for tax-exempt debt.
Services: Personal banking, Business Banking and Wealth Management
What they do: City National Bank offers personalized financial solutions to individuals, families, and businesses. Its customers get access access to Relationship Managers to determine the best products for them. From checking accounts to loans, City National Bank provides a range of services for clients to choose from.
Services: Veterinary Lending and Payment Processing
What they do: Scratch Financial provides veterinary clinics with a financial platform that handles standard credit card transactions as well as patient financing options. The technology enables pet owners to fund care using 12- to 24-month repayment terms while retaining the ability to settle balances early without penalty. Veterinary practices utilize this software to streamline front-desk billing procedures while expanding financing access for clients.
Services: Agricultural Financing and Supply Chain Management
What they do: ProducePay issues pre-season working capital and quick-pay financing to help agricultural suppliers navigate seasonal revenue gaps. By embedding these funding tools into its Predictable Commerce Programs, the company pairs financial access directly with live supply chain tracking. ProducePay’s platform enables commercial growers and buyers to establish continuous sourcing relationships backed by real-time trade data and stable capital.
Services: Debt Consolidation
What they do: Happy Money uses behavioral psychology and personal loans to help users consolidate credit card debt and build savings. The company offers transparent, fixed-rate loans designed to replace high-interest revolving debt with structured repayment plans. Happy Money has originated over $7 billion dollars in loans and serves customers seeking to shift from borrowing to saving.
Services: Accounting Automation
What they do: FloQast automates accounting workflows with AI agents to orchestrate complex financial closing processes and routine accounting operations. The platform executes reconciliations and journal entries while maintaining transparent, decision-level logging compliant with rigorous auditing standards. FloQast’s AI agents are designed to meet audit standards, with financial controllers maintain oversight by requiring explicit human authorization before any transaction commits to the books.
Services: Risk Management
What they do: StockShield develops the Equity Protection Trust, a financial risk management platform designed to protect concentrated stock positions of $10 million or more in both public and private companies. The fintech company’s approach reduces downside risk from market volatility while preserving full upside potential. Headquartered in Pasadena, StockShield serves high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors seeking alternatives to traditional hedging strategies.
Services: Event and Sports Betting
What they do: Smarkets provides a digital exchange platform where users trade on outcome probabilities for sports, political and cultural events. The fintech enterprise continues its expansion by pursuing U.S. federal regulatory approval for a nationwide prediction market. In parallel, Smarkets develops SBK, a mobile sportsbook app designed to deliver institutional exchange pricing through a simplified consumer interface.
Services: Automated Credit Underwriting
What they do: Zest AI operates a credit underwriting platform that automates lending decisions for financial institutions. The company’s ZAML platform uses machine learning models to auto-decide loan applications while identifying creditworthy borrowers who might be overlooked by traditional systems. Lenders use Zest AI’s technology to streamline underwriting, approve more qualified applicants and maintain consistency across credit decisions.
Services: Mortgage and Home Refinancing
What they do: Pennymac provides mortgage origination, loan servicing and investment management services across the United States. The company issues mortgages through direct consumer lending, wholesale channels and correspondent aggregation networks that acquire loans from third-party lenders. These integrated operations allow the firm to manage extensive home loan portfolios while administering capital investments.
