The IPO market has been eerily quiet lately due to tariff turmoil, but fintech is too hot to keep under wraps forever—which is why a few big players are finally making their debut.
Stock and crypto trading platform eToro went public today at $52 per share. Famed for its “CopyTrader” tool that enables any average Joe to mimic veteran investors’ trades, this Israeli-based company has seen its revenue soar from $639 million in 2023 to $931 million in 2024.
Despite these strong financials, eToro has tried and failed to IPO a couple of times already: once in 2002 as part of a merger, then again this March, right before Liberation Day gave the company a serious case of cold feet. But now, with trade wars easing, eToro is back with a vengeance. The IPO ended up 10X oversubscribed and shares soared 29.85% today, proving that pent-up demand had been ready and waiting in the wings.
Crowded competition
Hot on eToro’s heels, Chime filed paperwork to go public yesterday after it, too, delayed its debut due to tariffs. This San Francisco-based “neobank” is not a bank per se, but partners with financial institutions to provide checking and saving services on its app. It also comes with consumer-friendly benefits like low fees, credit cards that don’t require a credit check, early access to paychecks, and even the option to intentionally overdraw your account.
These many perks have built up a fan base of 8.6 million members as of March, up 23% from March 2024. Although it’s wallowed in the red for the previous three years, Chime turned things around in Q1 2025, reporting $518.7 million in revenue and $12.9 million in profits—a promising sign for all who hope to grab a piece of this investment pie once it’s ready for prime time.
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Finally, PayPal refuses to be left behind. The grandaddy of payment apps has been treading water lately, with Q1 revenue inching up just 1% to $7.8 billion compared to a year earlier. But management isn’t worried—the company is shifting its focus from total transaction volume toward boosting profitability per transaction.
That’s where a new partnership with Perplexity comes in. The AI-powered search engine boasts 15 million active users chatting away about potential purchases. Thanks to PayPal, Perplexity will now allow users to make said purchases without ever leaving the chat window.
The long-term potential of this deal is nearly limitless: Perplexity could quietly study consumers’ behavior, then slip the perfect purchase into a buyer’s path at the very best moment to entice them to bite. Make the process to buy something as easy as possible, reducing any and all friction via AI, and that sounds like a solid money-making, business-saving proposition all round.
All in all, it’s applications like these that explain why fintech just can’t be kept in the corner.—JD