A Year in Fintech in 50 Words

This year, as “every company becomes a fintech company,” fintech surged into mainstream consciousness. The fallout from COVID-19 crippled the economy, depressed small businesses, and scrambled many people’s financial outlooks. But it also fueled a wave of innovation as fintech companies rose to the challenge.

 
These are the fintech ideas and themes that defined the year, based on 50 of our most-used words in 2020:

For a glimpse of what’s ahead, check out The Big Ideas Fintech Will Tackle in 2021. 

Access: “We decided to tackle the problem of paying for college and, more importantly, accessing higher education. We want to make it free and we want to make it accessible. And we’re hacking the system to make it that way.” a16z Podcast: Fintech for Gen Z and Millennials, Amira Yahyaoui, Mos CEO

API: “The importance of Plaid and the API market more broadly cannot be overstated—an entire generation of neobanks, lenders, and financial management tools has been made possible through programmatic access to bank transaction data. Now a new set of API providers are emerging that follow a similar pattern. Much as Plaid allowed consumers to make their bank transaction data available to fintechs, these new platforms are giving fintechs access to payroll, insurance, credit, and ERP data.” The Promise of Payroll APIs, Anish Acharya, Seema Amble, and Rex Salisbury

Banks: “At present, most banks are reacting to pressure to be virtual and digital—simultaneously shifting more than 90 percent of their employees to work virtually while operating on legacy, on-prem core banking systems that have not yet migrated into the cloud. As bank services become increasingly digital, the viability of the traditional bank branch model will be called into question.” The Post-Pandemic Outlook for Banks (May 2020 fintech newsletter), Kristine Lipscomb

Brand: “Brand permission and brand stretch are key concepts, particularly as non-fintech companies like Apple and Google start offering banking products and fintech companies pursue the concept of self-driving money. Though consumer attitudes toward online financial services are changing (remember how insane it seemed that people were giving Mint their bank credentials?), fintech products still face a higher bar for adoption than other types of consumer internet products.” Three Questions for Fintech Product Managers, Anish Acharya

Build: “Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? …There are always outstanding people in even the most broken systems—we need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have, and on building the answers to those problems.” It’s Time to Build, Marc Andreessen

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Πηγή: a16z.com