Fintech Nexus asked peers to recommend female fintech founders who they felt we all should watch over the next year.
Today is part two of our series recognizing a group of women who are inspiring the future of the financial technology industry, according to their peers. Fintech Nexus asked the LinkedIn universe, “who are female fintech founders that I can feature in an article related to who we should be watching over the next year?”
I received nearly 100 comments with recommendations on fintech founders who are doing myriad things in the industry, from promoting financial literacy, to helping disadvantaged populations have access to credit to securing venture capital funding to taking their company to unicorn status.
Speaking of funding, while fintech continues to dominate the technology landscape, female founders and co-founders still don’t get the kind of venture capital backing of their male peers. Pitchbook’s recent report shows a significant gap between U.S. venture capital deals and amount of investment in female founders versus companies with male and female founders.
There is a bit of good news with the new numbers — the drop in investments to female founders seems to be leveling off a bit and capital invested skyrocketed in the first quarter of 2025.
That said, let’s take a look at the female fintech founders captivating their peers. I couldn’t include all of the recommendations, but you can see most of them in the LinkedIn post. The following are listed in alphabetical order.
Shivani Siroya
Founder and CEO at Tala
What she’s doing: Tala touts itself as the “world’s largest financial platform” providing access to credit, financial services and tools to underserved communities in emerging markets.
Why Shivani is crushing it:
- Recently announced Tala hit a new milestone of $300 million in annualized revenue run rate as of Q1 2025.
- The fintech serves over 10 million customers across three continents, has originated $6 billion in credit, and maintains a 92% repayment rate.
- Tala raised nearly $500 million from investors such as IVP, Revolution Growth and PayPal Ventures.
- Tala was recognized, for the second consecutive year, as one of the “World’s Top Fintech Companies” by CNBC and Statista.
Where you may have read about Shivani:
Beyond the Credit Score: How Tala’s New AI Model Unlocks True Financial Access
3 fintech predictions that will shape 2025
Fintech Tala brings loan access to the underserved ‘global majority’
Arbia Smiti
Co-founder and CEO Rosaly
What she’s doing: Based in France, Rosaly calls itself a “fintech for good,” offering an app for employers to help their employees manage budgets and stream their earned wages into their accounts to avoid entering cycles of debt caused by overdraft fees and high-interest credit.
Why Arbia is crushing it:
- Rosaly has developed a way to automate salary advances so they don’t interrupt a company’s cash flow, thus enabling companies to pay employees on demand versus once a month. And she’s taking it in front of the French legislature.
- Recently launched Radio Rosaly, a podcast series designed to boost the financial education of employees.
- In September 2022, Rosaly secured $10 million in seed funding to support its expansion into Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, while also boosting its features, like budget coaching, cashback and salary saving tools.
Where you may have read about Arbia:
Marla Sofer
Founder and CEO of Knomee
What she’s doing: Helps financial institutions unlock the full potential of their client relationships by strengthening connections, improving client retention, and accelerating growth through precision data discovery.
Why Marla is crushing it:
- Prior to starting Knomee, Marla led operational partnerships at BlackRock and J.P. Morgan that quantified in the billions of dollars.
- Developed Knomee to use behavioral science to create a personalized, gamified technique to aid users in defining their goals.
- Over 60% of Knomee users are women.
Where you may have read about Marla:
Making Change With Your Money: A Podcast Featuring Marla Sofer
Nikki Varanasi
Founder and CEO of Parrot Finance
What she’s doing: Enabling the average investor to mimic the institutional investing strategies of wealth managers and hedge funds.
Why Nikki is crushing it:
- Scaled the company to 400,000 users and $81 million since the beta launch eight months ago.
Where you may have read about Nikki:
Staax thinks peer-to-peer payments can onboard a new generation of stock investors
Meet 11 startups investors and analysts are calling the new generation of wealth-tech
Natasha Vernier
Co-founder and CEO of Cable
What she’s doing: Provides automated control testing so that banks and fintech stay compliant and mitigate financial crime.
Why Natasha is crushing it:
- The British-born lawyer and coder previously ran the financial fraud unit at Mozilla bank.
- This year, she announced that 2025 was a year of firsts for the company: Securing Cable’s first bank client with over 50 fintech programs, signing its first $200 billion asset bank client, the launch of its automated testing frameworks across Reg E, B, Z, UDAAP and the CRA and its first award from Banking Tech in the category of FinTech Start-up of the Year – Risk, Regulation & Compliance.
Where you may have read about Natasha:
The Transformers: Natasha Vernier, CEO of Cable
Cable wants to help banks cut financial crime through automated assurance