Despite of having the lion share of the world’s money, financial markets are among the most conservative fields of business and are usually focusing more on the results than on development and deployment of innovative solutions.
But the fast spread of disruptive companies like Robinhood, which allows free stock trading, has made 2016 really amazing for the FinTech industry and led to its moving into the mainstream.
Just five years ago FinTech was not something that most people would invest in, but now, it has become one of the hottest industries in the startup world. Why? Just because it gives the chance for a new company to offer services and compete with the big banks.
Let’s just think about how easier it has become to make a bank transaction online than it was few years ago. Now every big financial institution is obliged to incorporate online banking in its platform to be competitive on the market.
The internet platforms for crowd-funding are just another example of how FinTech has made our lives better and has empowered people to invest in projects on the other side of the globe. This type of technology continues to dramatically change the landscape for several spheres and the process is not going to slow down in the near future.
Experts predict that in 2017 we are going to see credit and debit cards becoming more and more useless in the developed world, where cash is quickly giving way to phone financial transactions.
The CEO of Vena Solutions Don Mal says that now having a smartphone in your pocket is much more important than your physical wallet. His expectation is that in the next five years the market for contactless cards will double and most of the retailers will accept mobile wallets.
Meanwhile the biometric sensors on our phones will work not only for the HealthTech industry, but also for better payment security. In the near future we will see an multistep process for verification, which may include fingerprints, iris scans and facial recognition.
Of course the better financial technologies will benefit not only the rich. In fact, they can be even more important for people in developing countries. In Kenya the system, that locals call “mobile money”, allows those without access to bank accounts to deposit, withdraw, and transfer cash with a simple SMS.
According to Science Magazine’s study the access to M-PESA, the country’s most popular mobile money system, lifted hundreds of thousands of Kenyans above the poverty line. The network was introduced in the country in 2007 by Kenya’s largest mobile service provider – Safaricom. It is now used by at least one person in 96% of Kenyan households.
You can learn more about the newest trends in FinTech and Blockchain sector by attending to Webit.Festival 2017. During the two-day agenda of the festival in Sofia you can listen to top level speakers from all over the world, who will share their experience on topics, such as Marketing & Innovation, Big Data & Cloud, IoE, Digital Transformation, Security & Privacy, Health & Wellbeing and Mobility.
Among them will be the Executive VP for Global product strategy of Wirecard Christian Von Hammel-Boten and the venture capital investor and CEO of Novus Ordo Capital Liliana Reasor.