It may seem like a long time ago now, but 2021 was the year of Upstart Holdings. The lending platform grew to a market cap of $30 billion and was aiming to disrupt the traditional pricing mechanisms for consumer loans before it crashed over 90% from all-time highs.
In recent quarters, the stock has made a recovery and now sits at a market cap around $8 billion as the company makes progress to go from annual losses to profitability.
The stock has come back from the dead, but that does not make it a great buy at today’s levels. Here are two fintech stocks that will be worth more than Upstart five years from now, and whether they are buys for your portfolio today.
The first stock with a more promising future than Upstart Holdings is SoFi Technologies(NASDAQ: SOFI), another highflier from 2020. The online bank has made a sharp recovery and is now generating positive earnings.
Last quarter, SoFi’s total customer base reached 11.75 million, growing at a 51% compound annual rate since 2021. This led to total revenue growth of 44% to $855 million just in the quarter.
More and more people in the United States are adopting SoFi’s ecosystem of financial services products that include savings accounts, personal loans, credit cards, and investing. The company’s goal is to become a one-stop mobile app for anyone’s personal finance needs, and it is now separating itself from the competition.
With its much larger scale, the fintech is leveraging its large customer base to generate a healthy profit. Net income grew 479% year over year last quarter to just under $100 million.
Today, the stock trades at a market cap of $25 billion, which does not look cheap compared to its price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 46. However, the company still has plenty of room to expand its leverage as an efficiently run online bank, meaning that this P/E will come down quickly. SoFi should stay much larger than Upstart and will be a strong stock over the next five years.
Image source: Getty Images.
A stock with a smaller market cap than Upstart is Remitly Global(NASDAQ: RELY). It is a remittance services provider with a market cap of $3.3 billion.
Shares of Remitly have fallen in 2025 because of two issues. Immigration changes in the U.S. may present a small but temporary headwind for its growth, but this will likely only end up being a blip on the radar.
But stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of fiat currencies, could present a long-term headwind for the fintech. However, this narrative isn’t supported when looking at the numbers and how people actually interact with remittance providers.
People earn money in the currency of the country where they are, and that still requires a remittance provider such as Remitly to send money back to their home country even when using a stablecoin. So the company just announced it will be using stablecoin access to fund an account on its platform.
Consumers love Remitly for its ease of use and fees that are lower than the competition’s. Revenue grew 34% year over year last quarter to $334 million, with net income of $11 million. Strong unit economics and minimal fixed costs mean that the company can ultimately generate high profit margins, giving it plenty of room to grow earnings in the years to come.
With a revenue base of $1.356 billion that is growing like a weed, Remitly has a chance to have a market cap much larger than Upstart if it can keep gaining market share in remittances in the years to come.
Another reason Remitly and SoFi will be larger than Upstart in five years is the fact that Upstart is going to struggle to generate enough profit to warrant its current market capitalization.
For the full year 2025, it is projecting just $35 million in total net income, for a forward P/E of well over 100. It relies on revenue generated by fees made on loans originated through its platform and lending technology but has a bloated cost base with high spending on customer support, technology development, and marketing costs.
The company has remained a niche player in the lending space, unable to disrupt traditional methods for generating personal loans. For example, SoFi is much larger than Upstart today.
Upstart has a rough path ahead, while the future for Remitly Global and SoFi Technologies looks bright. Include the latter two in your portfolio today and exclude the former.
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