From fintechs to banking as a service: global trends banks cannot ignore
Brandon McGee
“Ant Financial operates the payment service Alipay, the online first bank Mybank.cn, credit scoring Sesame, and B2C marketplace Zhao Can Bao. By pooling and matching the massive amounts of orthogonal data from its different financial and trading services, Ant Financial creates new AI-powered services that create enormous efficiencies and ultra-targeted customisation.
While fintech refers to financial companies deploying technology to revolutionise financial services, techfin refers to tech companies offering financial services as add-ons to their existing platforms. Alibaba’s Ant Financial above is an example. The most common trajectory in this case is to start by offering payments to improve customer experience, particularly for merchants… The second stage is to offer customised loans to merchants.”
Large banks are launching their own fintechs. For example, Goldman Sachs launched Marcus in the US, RBS launched its own millennial-friendly mobile bank Bo in the UK, Banca Sella launched HYPE in Italy, in the UAE Emirates NBD launched its consumer digital bank Liv and is now rolling out its SME digital bank E20.”
