What is Fintech? An overview

FinTech, or Financial Technology, is an emerging industry which looks to improve financial activities, especially for businesses, such as the delivery and automation of financial services. It covers many aspects of the Finance Industry and is appropriate for a large number of companies. The convenience of FinTech makes it a highly attractive solution for many businesses and consumers alike.

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What Is FinTech?

Developed in the 21st century, FinTech began its life as something that was primarily used to handle back-end processes for corporations and businesses. However, like most technological innovations, it soon evolved and has now become a process that is more consumer-based.

There is a range of sectors that FinTech covers, including education, retail and banking, nonprofit organisations and fundraising. At its core, FinTech refers to any monetary transaction, whether withdrawing or depositing money. It is completed through technology, such as on your smartphone or your computer. However, it can be much more nuanced than this.

Who Does FinTech Relate To?

Anyone can use FinTech, and it’s more than likely that you have used it in both your personal and professional life. For example, online businesses, rather than brick and mortar stores, are wholly dependent on FinTech to generate profits. Several years ago, you could only make purchases over eBay through PayPal, which was one FinTech company to establish itself early, even before the idea of FinTech became recognised.

Similarly, consumers can also take advantage of the benefits of FinTech. Besides paying for goods and services from eCommerce sites, they can also transfer money, through apps like Venmo, and check their bank balance through a smartphone app.

How Is FinTech Used In Business?

As we drift closer to a cashless society, such as what is gaining traction in India, FinTech can help businesses receive payments for their services without needing to hand over physical cash or cheques. This offers a convenient solution to dealing with change and also miscounting profits.

This adds a level of security when making transactions. As encryption is required when dealing with money, both businesses and consumers can feel confident their payments and details are secure.

Businesses can also use FinTech to secure loans, rather than going to a bank and receive crucial investment that allows them to improve business operations.

How Did It Become Known?

FinTech became a popular method of carrying out transactions following the 2008 financial crisis. The public became distrustful of banks, which encouraged them to look for alternatives. The result was bitcoin, launched in 2009, as well as a variety of startup companies working in the financial sector, allowing consumers to send and receive money without the need for a bank.

Initially, these transactions were made using computers, but the advent of the smartphone made FinTech more accessible. Rather than wait to make a transaction only when you were at home, you could send and receive money through smartphone apps, which includes PayPal as well as Google Pay and Apple Wallet.

The convenience helped FinTech spread, and as more businesses adopted the capability for consumers to pay for goods and services without using cash or their physical credit or debit card, more people embraced FinTech as a viable payment method.

Examples of FinTech Companies

There is a range of FinTech companies, some of which you may have heard of and even used, whereas others may be entirely new for you. The top ten FinTech companies, according to Investopedia, currently operating are:

  • Ant Financial
  • Adyen
  • Qudian
  • Xero
  • SoFi
  • Lufax
  • Avant
  • ZhongAn
  • Klarna
  • Oscar

There are many benefits to using these services. For example, Klarna is a FinTech company that allows you to ‘pay later.’ Here, consumers can purchase a product from an ecommerce company, such as ASOS, but they do not need to pay upfront. Instead, Klarna gives the customer 30 days from the initial purchase to pay up. This is ideal for emergency payments and before-payday. You can also use Klarna to spread the payments, so rather than paying one lump sum, you can pay a percentage of the difference, usually 33%, over three months.

How JVR Consultancy Can Help

Convenient, easy to understand, and versatile, FinTech is a process that signals the shift from traditional payment methods towards the online payments that more people look for when shopping or seeking a service. JVR Consultancy are specialists in assisting and enabling businesses to achieve accreditations through a number of areas, which include:

Cyber Security
Data Protection
Act as your DPO (working to guarantee GDPR compliance).

We can also undertake FREE Gap Analysis.

If this is something that sounds like it will benefit your business and contribute to enhancing its FinTech capability, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today by calling our head office on 01628 56 52 56 where our team can provide more details.

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