RING ME UP
A shopper uses her phone to access Adyen’s payment network.FINTECH
Adyen
6 NETHERLANDS
(AS: ADYEN, $1,906)Amsterdam-based
Adyen has built a
reputation as the
go-to payments pro-
vider for businesses
that need to oper-
ate globally, with
customers ranging
from McDonald’s
to Microsoft to
Uber. It can process
payments using
hundreds of meth-
ods and currencies.
Adyen uses its own
payments infra-
structure, combined
with machine learn-
ing, to minimize
chargebacks and
fraud. It processed
about $284 billion
worth of pay-
ments in 2019, and
experienced 23%
growth in payment
volumes in the first
half of 2020 and a
27% increase in net
revenue, despite the
pandemic.Square
9 U.S. (SQ, $196)Square, which was
once best known for
its little white plug-
in credit card swip-
ers—as well as being
Twitter CEO Jack
Dorsey’s side hus-
tle—has grown into
a major force in pay-
ments and banking
in its own right. With
a stock price that
has tripled so far in
2020, Square’s mar-
ket value has sur-
passed that of Gold-
man Sachs. What
has investors so
revved up? Likely its
shiny new banking li-
cense (approved in
March) and its Cash
App, a peer-to-peer
payments and cryp-
tocurrency-trading
service whose rapid
growth has made it a
rival to PayPal’s
Venmo. Next up: a
possible acquisition
of Credit Karma’s
tax-preparation
business.PayPal
34 U.S. (PYPL, $193)The former subsid-
iary of eBay has defi-
nitely come into its
own in its past five
years of indepen-
dence. Poised to
reap the benefits of
consumers’ growing
reliance on digital
payments, PayPal
has excelled during
the coronavirus pan-
demic, growing rev-
enues nearly 20% in
the first three quar-
ters of the year—
exceeding even its
average three-year
growth rate of 18%.
Now one of the larg-
est small-business
lenders, PayPal is
also expanding its
offerings to include
buying and selling
cryptocurrency,
both through its
flagship product
and its peer-to-peer
payments app,
Venmo.Celltrion
49 SOUTH KOREA (KS: 068270, $266)The pandemic has pushed South Korea’s
Celltrion to further expand beyond its
core business of making “biosimilars,” or
cheaper generic versions of name-brand
“biologic” drugs and treatments. In Octo-
ber, the U.S. Food and Drug Administra-
tion granted emergency use authoriza-
tion for Celltrion’s rapid COVID-19 testing
kit, Sampinute, which promises to deliver
results within 10 minutes and with a 94%
sensitivity rate. The company is also de-
veloping a COVID-19 antibody treatment,
to reduce the severity of the coronavirus
once patients are infected, and has re-
ceived South Korean regulatory approval
to begin Phase III clinical trials of the drug.Facebook
50 U.S. (FB, $270)Last but not least, the social media play-
er’s underlying business remains strong.
And new business opportunities con-
tinue to emerge: A global e-commerce
strategy (including WhatsApp Pay) shows
signs of promise, for example. Analysts
project 17% to 20% future, long-term
growth. At the same time, reputational
risk is high—as is the very real threat of
regulatory crackdowns across different
regions, including the United States. Per-
haps even more ominous, the Facebook
core product is seeing declining engage-
ment levels with younger demographics.
In short: There is a reason the social net-
work is on this list, but also a reason it
comes in at No. 50.APPROACH
WITH
CAUTION
No company is problem-free, but
some fly more red flags than others.
From a big bet on COVID-19 drugs
that may or may not pay off, to a
booming business still plagued by
misinformation, consider these two
players high-risk, high-reward.THE FUTURE 50 • THE LIST 2021COURTESY OF ADYEN