Page 110 - Innovation Delaware 2019

What if you could take the spare change from your coffee runs and automatically invest
it towards your retirement? That’s the concept behind Acorns, an investment application with more than 5 million users.
The app scans users’ credit and debit purchases and moves the change from each purchase into a customized portfolio. (Say you spend $1.80 on that cup of coffee. The “leftover” $.20 is invested automatically.)
Acorns is one of several innovative startups popping up in Delaware’s growing fintech landscape. As Delaware Business Times reported in March, the company is working to fill up to 50 technology and operations jobs, which will be housed at Wilmington’s The Mill co-working space.
Another is online lender Marlette Funding, which is set to add more than 200 jobs. Marlette allows applicants to see loan offers with no impact on their credit score, and can provide funds in as little as one business day.
BEGINNING THE TRANSFORMATION
The core of fintech, says John Collins, co-founder of First State Fintech Lab, is an increase in the digitization of finance and an overall move toward cashless transactions. The shift, Collins notes, will be incremental, “but you could wake up five years from now and things are dramatically different.”
108 DelawareBusinessTimes.com
TROY MIX
FINTECH
by the Numbers
2,500
Number of JPMorgan Chase employees focused on fintech at the bank’s Delaware Technology Center in Wilmington
27,882
Total number of jobs in the financial services sector in Delaware, end of Q3 2018
8.4%
Employment growth outlook in financial services in Delaware through 2020; it’s almost 7 points above the national average
SOURCES: DELAWARE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE, JPMORGAN CHASE
JUSTIN HEYES/MOONLOOP PHOTOGRAPHY