We often hear the name FinTech. It seems quite familiar, but many of us still don’t completely understand it. Let’s first see what it is and how it helps to make our life more comfortable.
In simple words, FinTech (short for financial technologies) is all kinds of innovations that help make interaction with money simpler, more convenient, yet faster and more reliable. Such innovations may include software, programs, applications, business models, etc.
FinTech is also where companies apply the latest solutions in a race for customers. For example, https://jatapp.com/industries/real-estate-software-development-services/ is one good example of a FinTech company. It started as a traditional app development company. But then they expanded the list of services they provide, areas where they can be useful.
Development of FinTech in The Last Few Years
The world has been experiencing a huge technological breakthrough during the last decade. It seems that they create new things every day. Our life, including the financial sphere, has become completely digitized. Even the pandemics of the past years could not influence FinTech much. In some areas, the challenge provoked a search for new solutions adapted to the new realities.
Accenture consulting company predicts that the businesses that have previously invested in digitalizing their business will have the best positions in the market. The statistics show that people in America and globally downloaded software by almost 20% more than before the corona. At least one FinTech platform was used by almost 30% of the world population.
Those FinTech companies that want to stay in business must adjust to new realities to meet nowadays’ demands of their customers. Let’s see what areas of financial innovation will show the biggest development this year.
Open Banking
What is it exactly? Open banking, otherwise called API, is the provision of bank information about their customer to third parties if the customer gives their permission. After doing a FinTech industry analysis, experts say this financial technology is only developing and seems to be very promising shortly.
Both banks and customers benefit from this format. Let’s say a customer is completely satisfied by the bank’s work and wants to stay its regular customer. But the bank has not yet integrated the latest technologies into its services; this is why it can’t provide the range of services other banks can. The customer wants to track his spending, so he needs to use analytic tools. To avoid losing a regular customer, the bank transferred the customer’s information to a third party that could provide such analytic tools. The bank keeps its customer, and the customer receives regular reports on his spending. Everybody is happy.
The bank can also provide its customer’s information to other financial institutions and other kinds of companies. This makes the process of loan-taking and online payments for goods and services much faster.
Biometric Authentication
Expert companies have found out that most users hate remembering passwords and changing them once in a while. This is why many predict a great future for biometric authentication.
Why is it good? First, it is practical because you don’t need to remember those passwords. Such factors as voice, iris patterns, or fingerprints can not be faked. Your data will remain safe even if you lose your gadget.
Sustainable Finance
Sustainability is something the world is very much concerned about now. Experts believe that future FinTech activities will be connected with green finance. In this regard, the focus should be made on two things – sustainability and banking.
The banking sector is constantly seeking green solutions to reduce its emissions of carbon. A good start was made by one company from Finland that offered an app with the help of which banks will be able to track their impact on the environment and choose more nature-friendly investments.
Virtual Payment Cards
Virtual cards provide stronger guarantees of secure payments via the Internet. You keep a virtual card on your phone, and you can use it for purchases both online and inland shops.
For each purchase, you get a special number that is generated automatically and is canceled when the purchase is made. Besides, when you want to pay for something online, you only provide a virtual card number. You don’t need to provide the number of your physical card issued by the bank.
Virtual cards are beneficial for banks because:
- They don’t pay money for issuing physical cards
- They provide more reliable protection of customers’ data
- The process of payment with a virtual card is faster
Cloud Services
Cloud services are not the inventions of this or last year; they were known before. But due to the pandemics, financial companies have realized how essential it is to stay connected with their customers, have the possibility to work remotely, and be mobile. During this time, cloud services have started a new wave of development.
Since people interact with vendors, it is natural that their data gets into vendors’ bases. Financial institutions and their security teams look for reliable ways to protect this flow of personal data.
Banks receive huge storage and computing power at affordable prices using a cloud service. Cloud services also support API. For these reasons, experts believe this area will show a growth of 25% this year.
Conclusion
The trends in FinTech described in this article have become the drivers of the development of financial technologies. They will help financial institutions provide a wider range of services, protect their clients’ private data, remain in business, save the existing and gain new customers.
All the 2022 FinTech mentioned above trends are united by one common feature – they make our life much more comfortable and safer. Some of them might face difficulties in adoption at first. But in a long-term perspective, they will prove their efficiency in our cooperation with financial institutions.
