Small businesses are on the front lines of the fintech revolution, with fintechs big and small fighting to provide payments, financing, bookkeeping and even banking and lending. But how do small business owners themselves think about this rush of innovation?
Protocol | Fintech, in partnership with polling organization Morning Consult, polled a national sample of 746 small-business executives on their use of financial technologies. Respondents were all owners, founders, presidents, partners or members of the C-suite, and their businesses had annual recurring revenue of $1 million to $10 million.
Morning Consult conducted the interviews online from Nov. 9-26, 2021. Results from the full survey have a margin of error of plus-or-minus four percentage points.
The respondents led companies across a broad sweep of sectors, with construction (23%) and retail (13%) most strongly represented, followed by food and beverage, leisure and hospitality, and professional and business services (all at 8%).
Just over half over their businesses were more than 10 years old (52.5%), while there was a fairly even mix of younger companies: 9% were eight to nine years old, 11% were six to seven years old, 18% were four to five years old, and 10% were two to three years old. (Only three companies that had been operating one year or less responded; perhaps they have better things to focus on!)
The small businesses certainly skewed small, both in terms of staff numbers and revenue. 25% of companies had just 11 to 20 employees, 27% had one to 10 employees and a further 19% had 21 to 50 employees. Only 29% had more than 50 employees.
Over half of the companies had a revenue of $1,000,000 to $2,499,999 (56%), and the percentage reporting higher revenues tapered off as the income numbers increased: 19% reported revenue of $2,500,000 to $4,999,999, 15% reported $5,000,000 to $7,499,999 and 11% reported $7,500,000 to $10,000,000.
