IMAGE, FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY- THE NEW MEASURES OF COMPETITION in FINTECH

Marketing has a large part to play in developments and perceptions. Fintechs prepared to “be brave”, they have the benefit of huge client bases, and a breadth of products. Further to this, historically, they haven’t blown their own trumpets, whereas the newer players do.

Smaller players are nimble and can move quickly, but incumbents have been underplaying the functionalities they have, the kind of functionalities that small brands make a really huge deal of. They don’t position themselves as digitally nimble.

Loyalty and rewards still play a huge part in payment offerings but fintechs shouldn’t rest on their laurels and instead utilise new technology and data to improve upon their programmes, taking them to the next level.

Real-time messaging plays to the average attention span of the millennial,
which research has shown is only about 12 seconds. Transparency and control have proven to be and will continue to be a real bleeding edge of innovation. The key to next-generation offerings is ultra-personalised solutions and offerings, in real time. It seems a vast leap from the current status quo of most card programmes, but the technology and the data are already there for the taking.

As a conclusion, people want to take it a step further, we will potentially see virtual assistant type of functionalities being developed, where you’ll be able to set some rules and some of that thinking might be done for you, looking at products with different competitive rates.
I think we have seen a huge development in some of the money management space, and obviously fintechs do have a part to play in that.