iwoca has been named as the top small business lender, and highest ranked fintech firm, in The Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200. Released yesterday, iwoca ranks in 20th place ahead of a number of high-growth companies including Gymshark, Chilly’s Bottles and Brompton.

The International Track 200 ranks Britain’s mid-market private companies with the fastest growing international sales, measured over the last two years. The criteria for the list includes total sales between £25m - £200m and international sales between £1m - £100m.

Fintech innovation 

This recognition comes off the back of a strong year of innovation for iwoca. In the first half of  2020 the fintech launched iwocaPay, a pay later option for SMEs, and started implementing its lending API (OpenLending), which will reach over 400,000 small businesses through embedded finance partnerships.  

The company recently announced another UK industry first through the integration of iwocaPay into accounting platform Xero, a partnership to help small businesses get paid upfront and manage cash flow, whilst offering attractive payment options for customers.

Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS)

iwoca played an important role in supporting small businesses through the pandemic by lending nearly £250 million through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loans Scheme (CBILS) and will continue to lend until the scheme closes.

Christoph Rieche, co-founder and CEO at iwoca said: “iwoca was born out of the frustration that small businesses were struggling to find the finance they needed to reach their potential. We knew that technology could significantly shorten the long, drawn out and frustrating processes the banks were putting small business owners through, so built a company to fix this problem.

“I’m proud to say that less than a decade later, we’ve made finance available to more than 50,000 businesses and made more than £2 billion available across the UK and Germany. "

“We continue to innovate during this crucial time. We’re already reaching more than 1.3 million businesses through embedded finance partnerships, and have launched iwocaPay, the first of its kind invoice checkout to allow all businesses to be paid on time.”