Over the past 10 years a real revolution in finance has taken place. Infrastructure changed, the whole world moved to smartphones with accessible and cheap internet. It allowed hundreds of fintech companies to appear. Today, any new technology can be used to create financial solutions. But will software development alone affect the continued growth of fintech? 

Technological drivers of fintech growth

Fintech tends to grow through technology adoption, making a niche product a little better than a traditional bank. Payment services like Stripe or Checkout make online payments easier for companies, and international money transfer providers like Wise and Thunes make the service cheaper for people.

Financial solutions are evolving at the same speed as Internet technology. Face-ID appeared - face payments are created, fingerprint recognition technology was developed - the corresponding authorization is implemented. In this sense, fintech is much closer ideologically to IT companies than it is to banks.

Differences exist only in the speed of technology adoption around the world. Countries with smaller banking system legacies are growing faster on fintech, those with larger legacies are growing slower. For example, the "let the flowers bloom" approach (loosely translated from Chinese) leads to rapid growth of fintech and its diversity. Countries with the "here are our rules" approach are also growing, but more slowly. 

However, there are common features that do not depend on the strictness of regulation. First, fintech seeks mobility and moves from fixed locations to the consumer, or more precisely, to the consumer's smartphone. Second, all startups, and especially fintech startups, want to be global sooner or later. Everyone understands that development opportunities within the market are limited, so they aspire to international expansion. 

Western and Eastern approach to fintech

After 10 years of rapid development of fintech, the global agenda has reached regulation. The fintech world now focuses on working with cryptocurrencies and especially with stabelcoins. Stablecoin is a digital analogue of currency issued by private companies, backed by 1 to 1 fiat currency, serving as an intermediary between crypto and fiat money. 

In addition, governments around the world are thinking about how to launch their own digital currencies - CBDC (central bank digital currency). More than 50 countries are already researching or testing CBDCs, and China will officially launch the digital yuan in time for the 2022 Olympic Games. 

Despite the convergence of views between countries on many issues, we still see differences between Western and Eastern approaches to the development of fintech and the internet in general. The European discussion is dominated by a humanitarian focus, where market players merely want to draw a line between people's privacy and the use of their personal information in new technological solutions. Asia, on the other hand, has focused on the use of technology to control private lives, and is willing to make private information open. 

Technology is here, it's time for it to mature 

In fintech as in any other IT sphere it takes time from the emergence of technology to its daily use. The main success factor of a new solution is that it should become cheaper than technologies which are already being used.

The development of fintech is an uneven process in which everyone is looking at each other. But the trendsetter is still Asia. The Western world is looking closely at the Chinese Internet, at how e-commerce is created and how it merges with entertainment. At the same time, Asian fintech startups are looking closely at Silicon Valley, for example. I'm a fan of the Chinese Internet, and I think Ant Financial and WeChat are setting trends for the world, even though both are in trouble now. 

What will be the new value?

Everyone is fantasizing today that the Internet will cease to exist as we know it. It will take a different face. Given the trend toward isolation of the internet in different countries, this transition seems possible. The internet, and our communication in general, will change dramatically. But in which direction? 

Metaverses, cryptocurrencies, and everything that has no tangible form but has value - this is the number one technological focus. It's a new format of things that didn't exist in the world until recently. If there used to be a division between online and offline, today people have begun to forget those words. That distinction no longer exists, it remains only in the most conservative industries.

Virtual assets are trendsetting. Cryptocurrencies and NFTs will either be legalized or banned, but they will stay in our lives one way or another. Some countries, like China and Singapore, will be the fastest to switch to their own digital currencies, abandoning cash altogether. Other states may recognize crypto-assets as digital assets, along with stocks, or real estate.

Along with digital assets came new value categories for businesses. Value is now content, time, and human attention. Many companies use these metrics nowadays. For example, their business KPIs are not calculated by the number of users, but by the time users spend on the platform or using your product. What the tech giants are doing today is a battle for user time, which has become the new value.  

We are in a global marketplace with different visions and paths to progress, but our technology is universal. This means that at different speeds all countries in the world will very quickly find themselves in our new digital world. And it is so interesting to see what it will become.