Fintech's Driving Forces

Fintech is rocketing. With investments in the sector quadrupling from $3 billion in 2013 to $12 billion in 2014, the growth of fintech - which comprehends any company innovating finance and its process - seems it won’t stop soon.

Fintech includes an incredible variety of businesses, ranging from online investing portals to mobile payment systems, that are transforming the processes and the operations of finance, making them more efficient, agile and transparent. But in this flourishing sector of very different companies, which are the ones that are currently driving up the sector?

According to a sector expert, who has analyzed the winners of the various fintech startup competitions in 2015 there are three categories which are mostly driving the value of fintech up:

1. Companies that provide data analysis services. It is increasingly possible for us to conduct financial operations such as applying for a loan or transferring money overseas- while remaining seated at home. With this comes a growing need to reduce the enhanced information asymmetry that this generates while trying to read in an efficient way the data we produce. Fintech companies are now helping to analyse this data, creating intelligence for various purposes, for example borrower’s due diligence.
   
   
2. Payment system provides. Startups in this area focus on increasing ways to pay, including credit cards and apps on mobile phones, ongoing subscriptions, contactless payments and bitcoin payments. These companies respond to the growing need to pay and transfer money abroad fast, with no expenses and from mobile devices too.
   
   
3. Debt marketplaces. Peer-to-peer and peer-to-business companies have flourished in recent years, together with other forms of crowdfunding, to respond to the difficulties companies were and are still encountering in accessing bank finance. Not only peer-to-peer lending portals have less strict credit eligibility requirements, but they can also provide better conditions for both the lender and the borrower, given that they operate with less overhead than banks.
   

Although these are the kinds of companies that are pushing the growth within the fintech sector, we can be sure that fintech will certainly soon be much more than this as new applications of technologies to finance are discovered. The result - we all hope - will be a much more transparent and efficient financial sector.

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About the author - Irene Tordera

Born and raised in Milan, Italy, Irene is an International Business graduate, with a strong interest for innovative ideas that can simplify our lives.
During her studies, she co-founded an online community for sportspeople and worked in marketing positions at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising and at the European Business Angel Network, in Brussels. She is a passionate blogger about crowdfunding and the startup ecosystem.