Trend 1: Digital money
Money has well and truly gone digital. You can now pay for goods and services at the tap of a screen via mobile apps or by scanning your phone in a shop. In China, people can even pay by flashing their smiles, using a “Smile to Pay” facial recognition payment service. These days, physical money often doesn’t come into it.
Trend 2: The future of money – will physical money disappear?
The digitization of money is forever altering our relationship with money, to the extent that physical money could disappear entirely. If that sounds far-fetched, consider that more than 600 currencies have disappeared in the last 30 years, and it’s not unthinkable that more will either disappear altogether or be replaced by digital currencies. That goes for major currencies, too. As an example, the European Central Bank is already exploring the introduction of a “digital euro.”
Trend 3: The rise of finance apps
Finance apps and services are being offered not by traditional banks but by tech giants and digital-native startups, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and PayPal. Powered by data and AI capabilities, this new breed of fintech providers is threatening the long-established monopoly that traditional banks and financial service providers have over money and payments. In just one example, PayPal-owned Venmo processed $159 billion in payments in 2020, representing a 59 percent year-on-year increase. Just think how long it would take a traditional bank to achieve that kind of customer growth. It’s astonishing.
Trend 4: Consumer expectations for more personalized, intelligent services
The digitization of money is creating huge streams of data on what customers actually do with their money – and this information can be used to offer customers helpful insights about their spending or even to cross-sell other relevant financial products and services in the future.
This trend is so significant that a PwC survey on technology in finance cited customer intelligence as the most important predictor of revenue growth and profitability. Bottom line, customers expect these intelligent services, and if traditional providers don’t offer them, you can be sure the tech giants and digital-native startups will step in to fill the gap.
To read the full article, please visit Forbes.
