Fintech

Fintech is revolutionizing traditional financial services through innovative technologies that making banking simpler, easier, and more accessible for billions of people, including hundreds of millions of previously unbanked individuals.

While there is some AI and perhaps even blockchain in some fintech solutions, the key innovation for most fintech companies and neobanks is the plain old smartphone, which, with the right app, put the power of banking, investing, payments, and much more in the palm of pretty much anyone’s hand.

Fintech companies change how we handle our money.

Remember going to the bank with your mom or dad, waiting in line, and then talking to a teller to get some money, or make a deposit? Or, more recently, going to an ATM to get cash?

Fintech companies enable pretty much everything we used to have to do in person right on our smartphones. They move us from old-school banking to easy-to-use mobile apps. And that, of course, offers convenience and easy access to our finances like never before. Now, we can do many financial tasks wherever we are without having to go to a physical bank.

Mobile banking, which used to be something new, is now a key part of the fintech industry. It connects all of us to our financial tasks seamlessly.

Pretty much anything you can think of needing to do with money and investments, fintech apps can do. Here’s a short list:

1. Payments and transfers
2. Budgeting and personal finance
3. Savings and investments
4. Lending and credit
5. Bank accounts
6. Insurance
7. Financial education

All of this includes international transfers and currency exchanges, contactless payments and digital wallets, as well as tracking your spending and setting budgets. Fintech apps also enable automated investing, cryptocurrency trading, instant personal loans, credit score checking and monitoring, and on-demand insurance.

In other words: pretty much anything you might need to do with money.

Some of the biggest fintech apps are in the wallets and payments spaces. Think Google Wallet, Apple’s Wallet app, and popular payment apps such as Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle.

The big financial institutions also have fintech apps, so you’ll find banking and investment apps for the biggest and most established banks, such as Chase, Capital One, Citi, and Wells Fargo, among others.

You’ll also see challenger banks and neobanks on the list: companies like Chime, Current, Varo, Nubank in Brazil, Revolut in the UK, N26 in Germany, and many more.

One of the biggest trends in fintech is the expansion of product-focused fintech apps and narrow, niche neobanks to full-fledged digital banks and banking apps that can handle all of their customers’ financial needs in 1 place.

In fact, if you look at the top fintech apps by category, there’s been a huge consolidation to the large uber-category of banking, whereas in previous years most apps only offers a slice of fintech functionality:

In other words, digital wallets, payment apps, insurance providers, and investment apps have expanding their capabilities to offer 1-stop solutions for their customers’ financial needs.