2016: The year of Fin-Technological Revolution

BY: Mr Anish Williams CEO & Co-Founder of TranServ

With digital proliferation and technological innovations over the past few years having disrupted almost every aspect of today’s life, the age old adage of ‘money makes the world go round’ does not hold true any longer. Finance and commerce have largely gone digital, and the ‘money’, as we know it, is today mostly encoded in form of bits and bytes with banks and financial institutions. Consider your own financial transactions for proof. Very few everyday transactions nowadays require you to deal in hard cash, and even those areas are slowly and steadily moving towards a more digital form of making payments. From

Consider your own financial transactions for proof. Very few everyday transactions nowadays require you to deal in hard cash, and even those areas are slowly and steadily moving towards a more digital form of making payments. From evolution of digital wallets and alternative lending space to the widespread adoption of the concept of blockchains and bitcoins, 2015 saw a lot technological advances that enabled better services for the consumers and opened up newer and more lucrative business opportunities for financial services providers. The coming year promises to build upon this success to further consolidate the disruptive proposition that is fintech.

Take, for example, mobile wallets. In their earliest form, mobile wallets were nothing more than a convenient alternative platform for paying bills and utility charges. But with the rapid advancement in technology, we are currently witnessing several new innovations in the sector. Recent developments such as community-driven social payments and native phone payments integration are adding more value and options to the end-user transactional experience, while the usage of near field communication (NFC) devices, POS systems and prepaid cards linked directly to mobile wallets is leading to the incorporation of the relatively untapped offline market into the mainstream digital transactional ecosystem. Given this disruptive impact, governments across the globe are now exploring mobile wallets as a viable medium to extend the benefits of financial inclusions to the unbanked population. With convenient usage and highly efficient outreach, mobile wallets will become a major catalyst in driving the cause of a cashless economy in the coming future.

Similarly, like wallets, the emergence of technology-based alternate financial lending options has been changing the way money lending businesses operate. While banks and financial institutions have traditionally been the key players in the lending ecosystem, the consumer was often tied down by the sheer paperwork that usually accompanied the application of any kind of loan. The inception of alternate lending spaces has added a lot of convenience for the consumers, who are presented with an extremely streamlined application process with very little paperwork to deal with. Moreover, aided by their proprietary algorithm and advanced technological frameworks, these alternative lenders have been making better, more efficient and – most importantly – highly accurate lending decisions. Players in the banking and financial services segments are slowly and steadily waking up to this disruption in their hegemony over the lending industry, and are exploring the possibility of possible tie-ups with these alternate lending facilitators to tap into a much larger consumer base and to add more quality as well as diversity to their current offerings.

But that is not all that 2016 promises to usher in for the fintech industry. Having recently seen the dramatic impact that the concept of blockchain has had on the overall financial market, it is likely that the current year will bear to witness to more players delving into this novel area to maximise their efficiency and minimise costs of operations.

Anish Williams

Mr Anish Williams CEO & Co-Founder of TranServ

Moreover, with mobiles steadily becoming the platform of choice for transactions the world over, it is very possible that we might see the feasibility of mobile-only banks being explored by financial institutions around the globe due to the benefits that they offer – better consumer connect, seamless end-user service provision, ubiquitous presence and marginal operational costs. A few mobile-only banks are already operational in Europe, particularly in the UK, and are generating extremely impressive response from the consumers.

The above developments are just few amongst many such innovations currently being explored by the fintech industry. In the face of such massive shift in the consumer behaviour and industry modus operandi, to say that 2016 will be a landmark year for fintech will be a major understatement. With so much already in place and the promise of much more to come, the current year could well and truly mark the first tangible movement towards a holistic, truly cashless global digital economy.