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The payments industry has entered a new era. The way we transacted changed as we physically separated – accelerating the shift to digital commerce that was already underway long before the pandemic hit. And, the way consumers transact will continue to be shaped by this new normal long after the pandemic subsides.

As the months roll on, the full effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have become clearer across the globe. Without a doubt, among the hardest hit regions has been Latin America. But despite the difficult health situation, banking systems have, so far, responded well to the socio-economic impacts of the crisis.

“Success in creating effective AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don’t know. So, we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it,” noted physicist Stephen Hawking postulated in 2017, shortly before his death.

In October 2015, the alternative-data company Eagle Alpha published its research on GoPro, the popular action camera company, with much of its findings having been determined by using web-scraping techniques. “The data from US electronics websites pointed to potential weakness in GoPro revenue for the third quarter of that year,” Eagle Alpha noted.

By now, most of us will have at least heard of the Internet of things (IoT), with many excitedly anticipating the realm of possibilities that the collection and utilisation of data by IoT devices will eventually offer. Among those possibilities is the invaluable insight that this data will provide, particularly with regards to our interests, preferences and regular habits and practices.

As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, financial institutions all across the world are under intense pressure to improve efficiency, reduce costs and boost productivity. Indeed, there is now a considerable global need for the financial-services industry to evolve comprehensively from traditional, age-old business models.

“We have only just overcome the liquidity phase of the crisis in countries that are now relaxing restrictions. In many others, the health crisis is still acute. And the epidemic could flare up again anywhere,” the general manager, Agustin Carstens, of Bank for International Settlements (BIS) acknowledged in late June whilst discussing the Bank’s 2020 “Annual Economic Report”.

It has been an unusually eventful year for central banks all over the world in 2020, and given the current circumstances, the coming year is set to be no less busy. With a variety of challenges to overcome, therefore, central banks hope to achieve several important goals before the end of 2021.

Thanks to key advances being made within the realm of fintech (financial technology), the term democratisation of finance has become perhaps the most important of all from a global-development perspective in recent years. But truth be told, the actual democratisation process can mean different things to different people.

With COVID-19 still dominating the narrative across the global banking industry, arguably the biggest challenge lenders will face in 2021 is how best to maximise the customer experience amidst such a challenging environment. Indeed, given the low interest rates that have continued to weigh heavily on banks’ net interest income (NII)