From online payments to security systems, here’s the facts.

In an ever-evolving digital world, providing customers and partners with the best solutions is often a matter of digitizing the right things. This might sound like a weird way of putting it, but let’s break it down.

We all know what finances are, right? And we all understand that technology, by definition, covers a pretty wide field. Put these two together and you’ve got financial technology, or fintech for short.

Fintech is basically any new technology that is looking to improve the quality, speed or delivery of financial services. In a nutshell, fintech is the tool that helps both organizations and individuals manage their lives, business, operations and processes with software on their computers, tablets and/or phones.

Here’s a pretty common example: a store looking to sell products online.

E-commerce has proved itself to be a lifesaver for many businesses, especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Small local stores managed to keep their employees; big businesses made quarantine just a little bit easier. However, it was the payment systems in place that were the beating heart of this solution. Online payments by card or through services like PayPal might seem like a given, but they’re usually not the first things that comes to mind if you’ve got a business that has a physical location and venue.

This is fintech. Setting up the process for payment – no matter which medium it’s going through – is not exactly a piece of cake. Sure, some apps make it easier than others, but there is a new method popping up every day, and the security surrounding the process tends to evolve faster than you can follow.

Globally speaking, a business needs to be transparent, accessible and safe.

E-commerce is just one form of business where fintech can prove to be a key factor. Here’s some others:

Banks and financial institutions

If your bank doesn’t have any online options, you’re in for a rude awakening. According to the EY’a Global Fintech Adoption Index, around 60% of consumers want to transact with financial institutions that provide a single platform, such as social media or mobile banking apps. That’s 60% of the customers available that will not consider your bank or financial institution if you don’t have some kind of technological support system in place.

It doesn’t have to be a complex system straight away. Offering the option of checking your balance online is enough for a first step, as long as it goes hand-in-hand with training your employees as well.

Tourism and hospitality

2020 excluding, there are roughly 1.5 billion international travellers per year visiting locations all around the world. Some of them are more popular than others – like the immortal city of Paris, which attracts a whopping 30-40 million visitors yearly. These are huge numbers, and they don’t even include the number of locals visiting a different city or region.

No matter the exact number of potential customers coming your way, your business needs to be ready to show its digital face. We’re not just talking about having a website: you need to have online payment options, or booking options, or at least software that will help keep track of the day-to-day accounts.

Stock and cryptocurrency

GameStop and Reddit have put the idea back on the “trending” lists, but the exchange has been around for a very long time. Like most things that survive through the ages, the stock market has the ability to change and adapt to fit the modern world.

One fairly new adaptation has been the addition of cryptocurrencies. With the combined powers of crypto and blockchain, the fintech world has been provided a tool to help reduce fraud and make exchange more transparent, quicker and easier. The ideas may be controversial, but they’re definitely something to consider!

Not exactly the brand you thought would be trending in 2021, right?.

Insurance

Our personal favorite when it comes to fintech is the magical world of insurance. They have their own technology (insurtech), but the two tend to be linked so much that it seems meaningless to keep them separate.

Insurance companies, agents and brokers can all benefit from some additional technological help. In our experience, the addition of just a single mobile payment app can cut down the work hours drastically – although it can be an exhausting task to set up. Both the insurance and finance worlds are incredibly security-oriented, so implementing software also requires putting up comprehensive safety measures.

We are no strangers to fintech. Our software often has to be almost entirely finance-oriented, and proper digitization of a business is commonly accompanied with the automation of the financial side – even if the business itself isn’t finance oriented.

If you’ve got any questions about fintech or the process of digitization, feel free to write us at support@wayseven.com !