< Fintech's Most Powerful Dealmakers of 2016

In November 2015, e-commerce giant Rakuten made a seemingly sudden leap into fintech financing, launching a dedicated $100 million fund. The Tokyo-based company, which has a financial services business but is better known as an Amazon.com-like retailer, was no stranger to strategic venture capital investing, however. Two years earlier it had formed Rakuten Ventures, whose portfolio includes algorithm marketplace Algorithmia and file-sharing service Send Anywhere; in July it doubled the size of its Global Investment Fund, to $200 million. (The unit also manages a ¥10 billion [$96 million] Japan Fund.) Headed by managing partner Oskar Miel, a Harvard MBA and former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker who has been with the Rakuten organization since 2013, the Rakuten FinTech Fund in May led a $15 million investment round in U.K. remittances start-up Azimo. Other holdings include U.S. companies BlueVine Capital (invoice factoring), Insikt (loan originating and investing), and WePay (small-business and crowdfunding payments); U.K.-based global payments servicer Currencycloud; and Bitnet Technologies, a Bitcoin payment processor that Rakuten acquired in August and made the nucleus of a blockchain lab it set up in Belfast. Blockchain and distributed ledger are in their infancy, Miel says, but “once consensus and adaptability are achieved among participants, they will reduce the cost of transaction processing and enable more efficiency across the banking, payments, insurance, and asset management industries.” He also observes that “the finance industry has traditionally required a lot of sector-specific knowledge, but we are recently seeing a new generation of outsiders bringing disruptive and innovative approaches to how the industry operates. This is effectively changing the landscape and spurring new competition that will no doubt bring about qualitative change in the way the financial industry operates.”

 
The 2016 Fintech Finance 35

1. Jonathan Korngold General Atlantic 2. Matthew Harris Bain Capital Ventures 3. Jane Gladstone Evercore Partners Building Resilient Portfolios: Infrastructure’s Strategic Advantage Sponsored by IFM Investors May 9, 2025 4. James Robinson III & James Robinson IV RRE Ventures 5. Steven McLaughlin Financial Technology Partners 6. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park Anthemis Group

7. Richard Garman & Brad Bernstein FTV Capital 8. Gerard von Dohlen Broadhaven Capital Partners 9. Darren Cohen Goldman Sachs Group 10. Hans Morris Nyca Partners 11. Meyer (Micky) Malka Ribbit Capital 12. Maria Gotsch Partnership Fund for New York City

13. Barry Silbert Digital Currency Group 14. Jay Reinemann Propel Venture Partners 15. Mariano Belinky Santander InnoVentures 16. Justin Brownhill & Neil DeSena SenaHill Partners 17. François Robinet AXA Strategic Ventures 18. Vanessa Colella Citi Ventures

19. Michael Schlein Accion International 20. Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates 21. Rumi Morales CME Ventures 22. Alastair (Alex) Rampell Andreessen Horowitz 23. Steve Gibson Euclid Opportunities 24. Fabian Vandenreydt SWIFT

25. Vladislav Solodkiy Life.SREDA 26. Gardiner Garrard III TTV Capital 27. Nektarios Liolios Startupbootcamp Fintech 28. Lawrence Wintermeyer Innovate Finance 29. Bina Kalola Bank of America Merrill Lynch 30. Hyder Jaffrey Fintech Innovation

31. Calvin Choi AMTD Group 32. Janos Barberis FinTech Hong Kong 33. Jalak Jobanputra Future Perfect Ventures 34. Sopnendu Mohanty Monetary Authority of Singapore 35. Oskar Mielczarek de la Miel Rakuten FinTech Fund