2020 was a breakthrough year for Code & Pepper, as we grew exponentially and were announced one of the fastest growing companies in Poland by Forbes. However we didn’t stop there. 2021 was even better!

If you want to find out more about our successes in 2020, feel free to read a post about that year on our blog here. Now, let’s talk about what happened later on. First of all, 2021 was the second pandemic year in a row, but it didn’t affect us at all, once again, as our work model has been mostly remote for years. Then, since we focus on FinTech products and develop apps for clients that offer their services without the need of in-person interactions, we could benefit from the overall market growth. 

The general state of FinTech

It was clearly visible on the stock markets, especially considering the Matrix U.S. FinTech Index, that after a brief drop in 2020, the FinTech industry not only got back on its feet last year, but also was exactly what the society and the investors appreciated and needed. It was the solution that let all kinds of businesses grow and that delivered numerous benefits for the customers during lockdowns world wide. In fact, it was a record year with 151 new unicorns. It was also a blockbuster year for crypto and blockchain, with USD 30 million in investments globally and a giant surge for alternative banking and buy-now-pay-later solutions – exactly what we needed.

“In the past one year, the sector has shown immense potential – be it strengthening digital payments infrastructure or technological advancements to an integration between the entire ecosystem. Digital payment infrastructure has seen the steepest adoption among SMEs during the last two years.”

Ankit Bhatnagar, Head of Product, Mswipe, source

2021 for Code & Pepper

We entered 2021 with 9 ongoing projects. Even though 6 of them ended, 3 are still in progress and will continue to be in the predictable future. Moreover, we started 16 new ones during the year, 6 of which are still going on – that gives us an impressive number of 25 products we worked on in 2021!

But we didn’t just create software last year. We had many business goals to realise and we managed to achieve them all, thus reorganising the way we operate.

First of all, we managed to maintain a healthy 50-50 ratio of the end-to-end and team augmentation projects in our portfolio.

Then, we managed to re-establish the technology stack that our development team uses. We selected the optimal solutions while creating FinTech products and specialised in them, so not only our clients know what to expect, but also our engineers can focus on honing their skills in a stable environment. You can read more about the technologies we use and find out why from this exhaustive blogpost – Our Technology Stack.

While implementing the changes, we also needed to maintain the team. While the employment structure among the engineers didn’t change much during 2021 (we entered the year with 42 specialists and finished it with 45) just a few weeks into 2022 we already had about 60 experts on board, thanks to new HR strategies.

All of these optimisations resulted in winning the Forbes Diamond award for the fastest growing company in the region (in our weight category) for the second year in a row!

What will the future look like?

We hope we know exactly what the future holds for us. We’re focused on delivering the highest quality services to the clients world-wide and after 15 years of experience on the market – we believe we understand their needs. But to do so, we need to constantly work on perfecting our capabilities and keep an eye on the new, up and coming ideas that can revolutionise the market at any given moment. 

Moreover, we cannot forget about what makes Code & Pepper the spiciest FinTech development agency – the people that make our company what it is. That’s why we’re introducing new ways of recruitment and welcoming new employees – more on this topic soon.

Let’s make 2022 even better, in the meantime keep an eye on our blog and social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook), where you can find not only more about Code & Pepper, but also tons of practical information about FinTech that we publish on a regular basis.