Fintech 2021 – Navigating The Hype

As an easy guide to refer to, here are the key takeaways from his workshop.

• It’s a great time to be interested in FinTech. FinTech’s funding is at an all-time high, double what it was last year! Also, every dollar out of five of the VC funding goes to FinTech.
• The opportunities seem endless but especially watch out for the rise of digital payments and digital banks. Blockchain and crypto are gaining mainstream acceptance and skyrocketing. Sustainability, financial literacy, FinTech as a Service, and Autonomous Finance are other key trends in 2021.
• Out of 900+ start-up unicorns (with a valuation over USD 1 billion), around 200 are FinTechs. Several B2C FinTechs are reaching a scale where they also turn a profit (also by focusing on key markets and by becoming marketplaces).
• Often overlooked by the public, B2B FinTechs have attracted 2/3 of FinTech funding this year, providing infrastructure solutions for payments, lending, e-commerce, or banking-as-a-service, filling in the technological debt created by banks.
• Blockchain leads another wave of innovation which is likely to be revolutionary, starting from cryptocurrencies (think of Bitcoin as a digital gold rather than means of payment), including stablecoins and CBDCs to smart contracts and dApps. Those are building the way to DeFi (Decentralized Finance) and ultimately the next generation of Finance, called Finance 2.0.
• DeFi shows excellent potential to disrupt many industries built on the role of a central counterparty or intermediary (built on Ethereum, Cardano, or Polkadot).