Analysis
Explore in-depth fintech analysis covering industry trends, technological shifts, market developments, and company strategies. Fintech Review delivers thoughtful commentary on the ideas, forces, and innovations shaping the future of financial services.
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Why Banks Cannot Buy Their Way Into Innovation
Recent news that BBVA is shutting down neobank Simple, that it had acquired for $117 million a few years ago, is telling us one thing: banks cannot buy their way into innovation. It is a pity because at the time of the acquisition in 2014, Simple was a neobank at the forefront of the US…
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What is Going on With Bitcoin?
What is Bitcoin? Obviously joking here. If you are not familiar with the most popular cryptocurrency, you must be quite disconnected from the world. Which is not a bad thing in all fairness. But c’mon man, even your grandma has heard of Bitcoin. It is insanely popular these days. Everybody is talking about it. From…
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5 Top Trends for Fintech in 2021
It is this time of the year. No, not the Mariah Carey’s “All I want For Christmas Is You” time of the year. The moment just after that, when the year starts and everybody is trying to make predictions. This time around, it will be the 2021 trends for fintech. It is actually quite fun…
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2020 Retrospective
At the beginning of last year, everybody made a few predictions for what 2020 would mean for the fintech industry. Obviously, at that point in time, Covid-19 was only a problem in Wuhan, China. You could see it in the distance, and it appeared well under control. That slightly changed in the following months, and…
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Private Banking Market: Can Neobanks Crack It?
Private banking is often misunderstood. It is not just a shinier card, better app, or free travel insurance.
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Are Fintechs Better at Lending than Banks?
Banks have been lending money to people and businesses for a long, long time. A lot of the incumbent banks can trace their roots back to the 19th century. Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which is the oldest bank in existence, was founded in 1472. Although they often rely on cranky processes and old…
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What Can You Do With AI in Financial Services?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is probably the biggest buzzword in the business and finance world. Yes, even more than blockchain. AI is not particularly new and can trace its roots back to the mid 1950s. However, it is true that developments in computing over the past 20 years have led the field to progress tremendously. It…
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Can Fintech Help With Financial Inclusion?
One of the biggest premise of fintech, perhaps somehow implied, is that it would change banking for the better. You know the story: the year is 2009, greedy banks have created a massive mess. And that’s an understatement, just watch The Big Short (ad) for a quick recap. In the following years, fintechs will emerge…
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Partnerships Between Banks and Fintechs: Good Idea?
When fintech first really emerged as an industry 15 years ago, it was all about how it would replace banking and existing financial services. As an aside, “really emerged” meaning that in the purest sense, technology has been deployed in financial services for a while. Post-crisis, the new kids on the block (not the actual…
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Is Covid-19 killing Cash?
Everybody has heard the motto “Cash is King” right? But is it really? Or is it slowly dying and Covid-19 will be its final blow? The King is dead, long live the King. It depends on the kind of cash we are actually talking about. Covid-19 might not be killing cash. There are two types…
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Are Low Interest Rates Good for Banks and Fintechs?
As the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic takes its toll on economies around the world, central banks are cutting their base rates (or discount rates) to new lows. This is the rate at which a commercial bank can borrow from a central bank, like the Fed in the USA or the ECB in the Eurozone,…
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Fintech Funding Reaches New Records
It seems that when it comes to funding for fintech startups, sky is the limit… Investors splash the cash on British startups as per City A.M. As quoted in this article, according to data released by consultancy KPMG, fintech funding is reaching new records. Fintech companies in the UK have attracted $48.5bn (£37.4bn) of investment…
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What it’s Like to Work in Fintech Today
Now that you know what Fintech is (and if not, have a quick read), we can have a look at what it’s like to work in Fintech today. Fintech is much more ‘Tech’ than it is ‘Fin’. It should actually be called ‘Techfin’ and not Fintech. Maybe not as brandable. As you must know now,…
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Why Santander Spinning Off Innoventures is Interesting
Santander, the Spanish banking giant, announced in September that from now on, Innoventures would operate as a separate entity. It is the bank’s Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) unit, set up in 2014 and responsible for investing into promising startups. It will be called Mouro Capital and have $400 million under management. Not too bad to…
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Will Fintechs be wiped out by Coronavirus?
The Coronavirus outbreak is disrupting lives across the world and is having a significant impact on the global economy. The damages are expected to be long-lasting, and the recovery very slow, most likely over a number of years. It could accelerate the death of cash. By some accounts, it could be the worst economic crisis…
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Blockchain and Crypto, Know the Difference!
Let’s clear a common mistake. Probably the biggest misconception in technology and finance that there is nowadays. There tends to be lots of confusion between blockchain and crypto (abbreviation of cryptocurrency). The confusion stems from the fact that the former powers the latter. You need to know the difference though: many people use these two…
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Stripe Scores a Big Funding Round, is it Surprising?
Stripe, the payments’ processing company, added $600 million to its Series G funding round in April 2020. Yes, Series G is a long way down from a Series A. Venture Capital heavyweights Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, GV, and Sequoia all participated in the fundraising. You kind of have to given the size of the round.…
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What is Regulatory Technology or RegTech?
The demand in terms of compliance is ever-increasing within the financial services industry. As a classic example of efficient market dynamics, it means that a number of innovative RegTech startups, such as Pichain, seized this opportunity and started to flourish to meet those demands. What is the meaning of RegTech?To put it simply, RegTech is…
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Is Peer-to-Peer Lending Facing a Reckoning?
Peer-to-peer lending has boomed in recent years, particularly in the US and the UK. And so has the funding funnelled to these companies. The VCs taking a particular interest in fintechs operating in the space. It had been also quite popular in China between 2011 and 2015, because lending there was really ripe for disruption.…
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Top European startups in Fintech: do you know them?
If you want to work in Fintech today, you will have to choose if you want to work for a bank, perhaps modernizing their tech stack, or at a Fintech company. However, the latter does not mean startup like most people think. Maybe you are not looking for a job and you just want to…
