Examples of FinTech technologies

The influence of the technological changes that humanity is experiencing represents a challenge for all economic sectors including financial institutions.

The word FinTech is a recent term resulting from the words “financial” and “technology”, applicable to any emerging technology that helps financial institutions to provide services in a novel way, as well as consumers to quickly access them.

Offering the customer what they really need is the main focus of the financial services offered by FinTech companies, which many of them have emerged in the last decade, providing new twists on various concepts.

1. Digital loans and credits

Focuses on alternative financing mechanisms, particularly crowdfunding and person-to-person lending.

2. Mobile banking

The services that can be performed through mobile banking are increasingly extensive and financial institutions place special emphasis on protecting their users’ data from possible cyber attacks.

3. Mobile payments

Online payments for both products and services and even person-to-person are a central focus of FinTech and have been the driving force behind the new ecosystem.

4. Cryptocurrency and Blockchain

Cryptocurrency exchanges connect users who buy or sell cryptocurrencies. Blockchain solutions have aimed to reduce fraud by keeping provenance data within the blockchain.

5. Trading and investment

Trading and investment have seen improvements with the adoption of FinTech.  Such technologies can sift through complex data sets and extract information in a matter of seconds. It is now possible to run large amounts of data through algorithms and identify trends and risks.

The importance of FinTech is largely due to the opportunity it provides investors to do their own research, pick stocks and see how their portfolio is performing in real time.

The big picture

For emerging economies, technology finance is a poster child for economic development. According to the Banco Nacional de Comercio Exterior (Bancomext), in the Asia-Pacific region, the most productive accelerators of FinTech startups emerged. Hong Kong and Singapore are the largest concentrators of this type of firms in the world.

In the United Kingdom, a new company in the field is created every hour and, according to Philip Hammond’s words at the 2018 International FinTech Conference, the goal is for this to happen in half the time.

In the case of Latin America, FinTech startups that responded to the needs of local markets began to emerge, from Mexico City to Buenos Aires, among many other cities. According to Bancomext data, Brazil contributes the largest number of such startups, followed by Mexico and Colombia. It is estimated that 60% of all FinTech companies operating today in the region emerged between 2014 and 2016.