The COVID-19 pandemic has driven a step-change across the European payments industry. We’ve seen an acceleration of cashless payments across markets where cash has historically been dominant. And an exponential increase in e-commerce activity as consumers were forced to stay at home during national lockdowns
Technology has soared during the COVID crisis, but the outlook for fintech funding has been mixed, as investors prioritized surety, especially during the pandemic’s early days. Although fintech funding experienced a pronounced drop during the first half of 2020 across VC, PE and M&A, it has recovered impressively, auguring well for 2021.
Fraudsters are attracted to money, and unfortunately for banks, they draw more than their share of fraudsters’ attention, resulting in the loss of sizeable amounts of revenue to hackers. Technology is helping banks fight cyberattacks but also aiding cyber-crooks. Is it a lost cause, or can banks win the battle using the right innovation?
Ever since Open Banking first launched in the UK nearly three years ago, the promise of sharing data to achieve more efficient, personalised banking services has been made a reality. Spurred on by increased customer centricity, banks have acted on the PSD2 mandate to deliver smarter, aggregated services to their respective customer base.
Open Banking originated half a decade ago as a European and UK consumer-protection regulatory initiative but has evolved into a popular technological concept. To give consumers more choice and data control, banks share their financial information, after receiving their consent, to third-party providers via APIs. The technology brings benefits to customers but also risks, so the Open Banking process must be carefully upgraded to find its promised place in banking.
2021 is fraught with questions about banking’s future in the strange, perplexing COVID-19 world, but there are key technological trends for industry participants to explore and exploit. Open banking, embedded finance, time and money, personalization, cybersecurity, digital currencies, payments without intermediaries will be principal factors in reshaping banking in Russia and worldwide. Staying in the game will hinge on a bank’s determination to make digital transformation its key strategical goal.
It’s fair to say that 2020 has been among the most consequential years ever for the fintech (financial technology) industry. Thanks in no small part to a deadly pandemic that swept across much of the world, consumers, households and businesses alike have all had to depend on the digital world a whole lot more than at any time previously.
Many of us are now familiar with the concept of software as a service (SaaS)—that is, the licensing and delivery model that enables users to subscribe to use-specific programmes and applications over the internet rather than having to buy them outright and install them on their computers.
It’s no secret that the last decade has been one of the most transformative periods for the global banking industry, at least from a regulatory perspective. Financial institutions have been forced to evolve under this new era of transparency, with authorities taking unprecedented steps to ensure that consumer protection
Banks have traditionally been considered the “owners” of whatever data they manage to collect on their customers. But that entrenched viewpoint was challenged by Open Banking, an initiative of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. Under this model, the consumer owns his or her data. Now the concept is spreading not only to other parts of the world but to non-payment financial products and services via Open Finance.