Improving the experience of money transfer will be the core development in Fintech in the next ten years, according to speakers at the Dublin Tech Summit.
The bedrock of development will be ensuring the buying experience is as comfortable as possible for the consumer, according to Louise Phelan, the Vice President of Global Operations at PayPal.
“Paying with the touch of one button, that's convenience”, said Phelan. “Cash is not king anymore, convenience is king.”
Digital technology, Phelan stated, “makes the global economy more accessible than ever”, and that going forward the focus should be on innovations to include everyone in the worldwide marketplace.
Speaking about Paypal, she said, “We want to democratise financial services so that anyone can move money, not just the affluent. We all have an obligation to support people and to move money around the globe.”
“If you don't innovate, you evaporate”, she added.
Changes in the way people will pay in the future were speculated on, with a heavy emphasis on fast and convenient payment, and mobile technology.
Jack Eadie, an investor with Eight Roads Ventures, talked about using fingerprint scanning and eye scanning for small payments, while John Lyon, CEO of Fire.com, speculated about fully digital bank accounts. Phelan said that mobile ways of paying were “not a fad, not going away”, and that they are now “a way of life”.
As well as payment providers, popular websites such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon (GAFA) will become more involved in the future with providing financial services, according to Philippe Gelis, the CEO of Kantox – a company that deals in foreign currency exchange – but will “not become banks themselves”.
Gelis noted the example of Uber setting up and managing banking solutions for new employees in 2015 – 30% of whom, according to Gelis, had no banking setup before joining the transportation company.
He also noted Facebook introducing one-touch money transfer options via Messenger, with Facebook managing the relationship between the banks and being the “front” for the transaction.
“[These relationships] will allow GAFA companies to keep themselves relevant to users, and provide financial services, without becoming financial institutions”, said Gelis.
Exciting talk from @Pgelis on the next 10 years in FinTech. Banks eager to collaborate to speed innovation.#dts #dublintechsummit pic.twitter.com/UrzORT7O9w
— Xwerx (@xwerx) February 16, 2017
Christian Marc Schmidt, in a talk on centred on user experience, stated that the best ones are always those that are “surprising”.
“For me, personally, it's always been about the interface becoming transparent”, he said.
Gelis added that Fintech companies will more closely resemble software development companies in the next ten years, due to the amount of work being put into financial software.
“The focus will be on building sophisticated new solutions and products”, he said, with particular reference to “completely automate international payments”.
Going forward speed and convenience options should be the priority according to Dora Ziambra, head of Business Development at Azimo, with Lyon saying that the creation of financial service products in the future will be about “putting an experience on top of a development”.
“The lack of an instantaneous transaction in the account is difficult”, Lyon said during a humourous anecdote about his son on a night out using contactless payment, as he did not discover the extent of damage done to his bank account until two days later.
Written by Alex Dunne
