In the past few years, the fintech industry has seen exponential growth. The rise of mobile banking, digital payment methods, and the continuing shift toward e-commerce have all contributed to this rise.

Fintech is a broad category that includes various financial services software applications built around the internet and mobile devices.  These services are often referred to as “digital banking” or “financial services software.”

The future of the fintech industry is unpredictable. It’s changing rapidly, and we can’t even begin to imagine the implications of where this is heading. Let’s take a look at the latest trends in the fintech industry.

Blockchain

Blockchain is a technology that was used initially to support cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Today, this technology has grown far beyond cryptocurrencies and is being applied to many different fields in the fintech industry.

Blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that records transactions and other information securely, verifiable, and permanently. Blockchain has great potential for financial inclusion.

For example, blockchain can allow people who don’t have enough money to open an account at a bank to borrow through mobile devices or online. It also offers greater transparency than traditional banking systems and can help prevent fraud.

Blockchain isn’t going away anytime soon either. It’s expected to grow exponentially as more organisations adopt this technology.

AI and Machine Learning

AI and Machine Learning are the driving force behind fintech innovation today. The ability to automate processes is an important part of this technology and is often viewed as a way to eliminate human error, improve productivity, and increase efficiency. This AI allows companies to automate various aspects of their business.

Also Read: How this homegrown fintech is helping Singaporeans with alternate investing

For example, AI is used in the banking industry to automatically identify trends in spending that may indicate fraud or even identity theft. This can be done by analysing trends in spending patterns over time, looking at specific locations where certain types of transactions occur, or even checking for unusual patterns in credit card transactions. 

Another use for AI is predicting future customer behaviour based on past information. Fintech businesses are building predictive models that help them see how likely a customer will churn or switch providers based on what they’ve observed from social media and other online sources.

The model can then be used to suggest personalised offers and sales campaigns that might entice the customer to stay with your company for a longer time.

The rise of Robotic Process Automation

Robotic process automation (RPA) is the future of fintech. This software helps organisations speed up their business processes by replacing human labour with advanced computer programmes that can complete tasks faster than humans. These software applications are built around the internet and mobile devices and have become increasingly popular in recent years.

The rise of RPA has had a significant impact on the way businesses do business. It’s helping them reduce costs and increase efficiency, staying competitive in the global marketplace without compromising quality or customer service.

RPA is a big win for businesses, but it could also be a big win for fintech, which has seen its share of both chaos and growth over the past few years.

Peer-to-peer finance

Peer-to-peer finance is a type of digital banking that helps people borrow and lend money to other individuals or organisations.

For example, Venmo allows you to transfer money to friends easier than ever before. This method of transferring money has gained popularity because it’s easy and convenient, and it’s integrated directly into the social media platform.

However, this payment method is not limited to just social media outlets. Peer-to-peer finance can also be found on other platforms like eBay or Etsy.

Platforms for fintech startups

One of the most recent trends in the fintech industry is the rise of new platforms for startups. With these platforms, companies can have their products and services easily accessible to users. Platforms like Apple’s App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft’s Windows Store make it easy for entrepreneurs to reach a global audience.

Also Read: How the global growth of fintech defies age and gender

57 per cent of app developers are on-board with this trend and plan on developing their product or service on a platform different from their previous one.  Additionally, major fintech companies like Amazon and Google are also getting into the game. Both Amazon and Google now offer software development kits (SDK) that allow developers to build apps around their respective ecosystems more conveniently.

This is just another example of how platforms are helping startups expand their horizons by providing access to audiences they didn’t have before.

Summing up

The future of the fintech industry is bright. The possibilities are endless in this rapidly changing industry.

From new advances in technology to increasing global demand, the future looks promising for companies within the fintech space. It seems like everyone these days is talking about fintech, so why not launch your own company?

Many opportunities are available, and it’s never too early to start planning. Take a look at our infographic that summarises some of the latest financial services software industry trends and our thoughts on what’s coming next!

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Singapore-based venture capital firm Jungle Ventures today announced a US$600 million close of their Fund IV with US$450 million in the main fund and US$150 million in additional managed commitments, bringing its total Assets Under Management (AUM) to over US$1 billion.

In a press statement, the firm said that the fund was an oversubscribed one with an initial target of US$350 million. This update followed the firs close of the fund that it announced in September 2021.

It included over 50 per cent of commitments from existing investors such as Temasek, IFC, FMO, and DEGto. New investors such as Mizuho Bank and StepStoneGroup also participated in the fund.

With Fund IV, Jungle Ventures said that it aims to strengthen this position while continuing on its ‘concentrated portfolio’ building approach, by making a projected 15-18 key investments across India and Southeast Asia.

Out of this fund, it has made investments in companies such as Vietnam-based digital bank Timo, Singapore-based enterprise solution Sleek, India-based D2C consumer electronics brand Atomberg, Vietnam-based healthcare and insurance platform Medici, Indonesia-based social commerce enablement platform Desty, social-crypto-community platform for women Eveworld, social commerce platform Mio, and SaaS platform inFeedo.

Also Read: David Gowdey of Jungle Ventures: Why we will see an IPO from SEA in the next 12-18 months

e27 has reached out to Jungle Ventures to understand more details about their plan with the fund.

Founded in 2012 by Amit Anand and Anurag Srivastava, Jungle Ventures was launched with a US$10 million debut fund and has since grown its AUM 100 times in 10 years.

With a focus on Southeast Asia and India, the firm implements a strategy that allows it to “pick category winners predictably and consistently”.

Its portfolio included Kredivo, Livspace and Moglix –all three of which were seed to unicorn investments by the firm. Apart from these companies, it has also invested in various categories including vertical e-commerce (Pomelo Fashion, Sociolla, Reddoorz), social commerce (Citymall, Evermos, Mio), fintech/insurtech (LeapFinance, Vayana, Turtlemint), B2B enablement (Kiotviet, Deskera, Waresix), electric vehicles (Datbike), SaaS (Builder.ai, BetterPlace) and brand aggregators/D2C brands (Believe, Hypefast).

Jungle Ventures has recently promoted Yash Sankrityayan, Sandeep Uberoi, and Manpreet Ratia as Managing Partners of the firm to join the firm’s leadership team of David Gowdey and the Founding Partners Amit Anand and Anurag Srivastava.

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Image Credit: Jungle Ventures

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You may be familiar with Torrent Systems, a software that allows anyone to download and share their files with a decentralised network free of cost. Torrent works on an honour system; if you download a file, you are expected to share the file with others in the network.

However, many users don’t follow this honour system as they don’t see any economic benefits for doing so, so it defeats Torrents’s very purpose.

The advent of cryptocurrency and blockchain-powered decentralisation has changed this scenario. Now, decentralisation comes with a lot of economic and other benefits for participants.

In the crypto industry, the area that deals with the economic benefits for participants in a decentralised network is called cryptoeconomics. This discipline seeks to solve user coordination problems through economic incentives and game theory.

A crucial element in decentralised networks

In a nutshell, cryptoeconomics is a discipline that studies the protocols that govern the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in a decentralised digital economy. It combines cryptography with economics, allowing for the coordination of the behaviour of network participants. Cryptoeconomics is crucial while building decentralised networks as it eliminates the need for a trusted third party to align participants’ incentives.

Also Read: Cryptocurrency, money laundering and KYC: Why are regulations important?

Traditionally, decentralised networks rely on cryptography to verify data transactions and provide economic incentives to encourage participants to behave in a certain way. It is achieved through a process called mining, where the miners who successfully validate a block of transactions receive bitcoins in rewards. This approach encourages miners to act honestly, making the network more secure and reliable.

Crypto mining, however, involves solving a complex mathematical problem based on a cryptographic hash algorithm.

What are hashes?

Hashes tie together blocks, creating a timestamped record of approved transactions. They are also used in the computational puzzles that miners compete to solve.

One of the consensus rules governing crypto transactions is that a Bitcoin can only be spent if a valid digital signature is generated from a private key. Bitcoin’s security model is also built around penalties and barriers to entry. These rules were introduced to prevent malicious actors from potentially taking control of the majority hashing power, a process known as a “51% attack“.

Nevertheless, gaining control of the hashing power is not easy and is prohibitively expensive; it costs nearly US$2 billion in hardware and electricity to do so.

These requirements and rules make Bitcoin immensely popular and successful even ten years after its invention by Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto foresaw people’s future thought processes and made assumptions about how they would react to specific incentives.

Nakamoto also made the cryptographic protocol rigid to make it easier to reward miners. There exists a symbiotic relationship between miners and the Bitcoin network. Without miners, there would be no confidence in the blockchain records. This relationship gives us confidence about Bitcoin’s future.

Cryptoeconomic Circle theory

In cryptoeconomic, a theory emerged recently to show how value flows through different participants in a crypto network. This theory, known as cryptoeconomic circle, was published by Joel Monegro, Partner at Placeholder Capital.

The cryptoeconomic circle (see the diagram) represents the three network participants — miners (supply), users (demand), and investors (capital). Each group exchanges the flow of value via a scarce cryptoeconomic resource called tokens.

The relationship between miners and users is relatively straightforward — miners are compensated for their work via tokens used by the users. Creating a network based on a mining setup makes sense as long as the costs of a decentralised system are outweighed by the benefits of having a distributed supply side (low cost of production, higher reliability, etc.).

As per this theory, the third participant — investors — has two vital roles: funding the cost of developing new technology, and 2) supporting the network by supplying financial capital to miners.

Monegro further divides investors into two: traders (short-term investors) and holders (long-term investors). While traders create liquidity for the token so that miners could cover operational costs, holders capitalise on the network for growth by supporting token prices.

Also Read: Cryptocurrency is a notoriously volatile field. Is it possible to generate a stable income?

Traders are a direct form of value transfer. On the other hand, miners sell earned tokens in the open market to cover their costs and reinvest profits. Holders is an indirect transfer of value in miners’ balance sheets rather than their income statements.

The cryptoeconomic circle focuses on understanding how networks operate and exchange or capture value.

Conclusion

As discussed above, cryptoeconomics as a discipline is crucial in decentralisation, especially in times of blockchain rage. It has broad implications, from supporting the first major cryptocurrency to forming the foundation of the next stage of digital currencies.

By educating ourselves on previous cryptoeconomic successes and pitfalls and staying up to date on the latest cryptoeconomic research, we can glimpse what the next major crypto networks may look like. However, we still have a long way to go to achieve ‘cryptoeconomic literacy’.

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Copyright: slonme

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The world and customers are constantly evolving. The pandemic has changed the way service businesses operate. Even as the world started to open up, consumers’ buying behaviour and habits have changed due to being cooped up at home for two years.

Consumers are willing to pay for goods online and are also willing to pay for services before coming down to a physical location. 

Businesses that do not adapt to bringing their products or services online and changing their marketing methods will be left behind. The days of running an advertisement on social media and getting prospects to meet face-to-face to sell them a service are outdated, ineffective, and expensive.

The biggest benefit of marketing and selling services online is working less and making more profits.

The traditional way of marketing and selling services are as follows:

• Step 1: Advertise online to gather leads
• Step 2: Call and capture a prospect’s information
• Step 3: Arrange a face-to-face meet up
• Step 4: Conduct a face-to-face sales presentation to educate and sell the services
• Step 5: Follow up manually to close sales

Each step requires optimising a moving part that bears an additional cost and increased drop-off rate. This process is not efficient.

However, choosing to sell and fulfil services online translates to fewer fulfilment costs, rental costs, and increased ability to serve more customers.

Also Read: 5 video marketing trends that marketers can leverage in 2022

Even traditional service businesses such as spas, facials and wellness centres can benefit from getting customers online.

As they can get customers to pay for their services beforehand, this greatly helps them manage their cash flow and secure sales as early as possible, therefore covering their advertising costs and effectively scaling their advertising campaigns faster. 

Here are two simple key points on how we did it: 

Using education content videos as a filter

Most businesses would educate their customers about their services before selling them their offerings.

For example, a facial parlour educates customers about their unique extraction methods before selling them a complete facial package. Before selling them a personal training package, a fitness company educates its customers about their unique weight loss methods. 

These are usually done during the sales process in a one-on-one setting where it is time-consuming and not the right fit for unqualified prospects.

Instead, we at Ascend Marketing help these businesses educate 100 to 1000 people in 30 to 90 minutes by creating advertisements to promote a free educational video or a free live event using an online sales funnel. This can easily be set up in 30 minutes and done at scale or even automated.

The educational video content will function as a filter to sniff out interesting prospects and encourage them to book a video call.

This will help save time and resources doing outbound calls and increase closing rates as business owners speak to customers who are genuinely interested.

These high-quality prospects are also more willing to make a purchase right after the video call and before physically coming down. 

Also Read: Circles.Life marketing head Delbert Ty shares their viral campaign recipes

We also help business owners seamlessly set up payment pages, issue invoices and collect payments through integration to a payment gateway.

Strong automated follow-up systems

The fortune is in the follow-up. In today’s market, consumers prefer to be contacted on their terms and timings, and some might prefer text messages while others prefer emails. Many dislike outbound phone calls unless they are informed ahead of time.

With this in mind, we strongly recommend having automated nurture sequences such as email marketing and text marketing. The beauty of such sequences is that they are automated. Business owners only need one series of messages and automatically set it up for all prospects. This ensures a consistent sales experience.

The automated sequences we have in place are behavioural-based, meaning different sequences are sent out based on what the lead does.

For example, if a lead did not book a call, they will be sent a reminder sequence to encourage them to book a call. If a lead did not sign up, they will be sent a nurture sequence to educate them on the sales process and eventually sign up for our clients’ services.

As these sequences are automated, new leads are nurtured 24/7 into becoming paying customers. These automated sequences will reduce manpower costs and human errors.

As a result of having done many successful marketing campaigns for varying clients from different niches in the past, Ascend Marketing have created template emails and text sequences for any business owner to use for their own business. They can deploy these templates, clone and have automated follow-up campaigns ready to go.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

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Global venture capital firm Antler has committed to investing US$100 million in early-stage startups in the Southeast Asian region.

The funding is expected to fuel the expansion of more than 300 new companies in Southeast Asia over the next four years.

Antler has invested in over 127 companies in the region to date. Among its investees are XanPool (open financial C2C software), Reebelo (a marketplace for affordable and sustainable tech devices), Appboxo (super-app), Sampingan (a blue-collar workforce platform), Airalo (global eSIM marketplace), and Homebase (a proptech startup).

It will continue to focus on high-growth industries and invest in founders in multiple geographies who are launching the defining companies of tomorrow.

Since its launch in Singapore in 2018, Antler has expanded its global network of offices. It recently established operations in Vietnam and Indonesia.

Also Read: Antler closes over US$300M, to provide follow-on capital for its portfolio startups

Jussi Salovaara, Co-Founder and Managing Partner Asia at Antler, said: “Southeast Asia is a breeding ground for innovative startups, and we want to give exceptional founders the investment, support, and expertise they need to realize their visions from the earliest stages. It is our ambition to help unlock and accelerate technological innovation in the region, and we are excited about the positive impact the founders we enable and invest in will create over the coming decade.”

In October 2021, Antler Singapore announced the close of over US$300 million in funding from Schroders, Vækstfonden, and Phoenix Group. Early that year, Antler said it would invest US$100 million in Indian startups over the next four years. The fund will support exceptional founders from the idea stage all the way to Series A and B.

Southeast Asia’s internet economy is poised to reach approximately US$360 billion by 2025, according to the latest e-Conomy SEA report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company. Technology is permeating into the region at an accelerated rate and Southeast Asia’s tech ecosystem is showing signs of maturity as 14 unicorn tech companies reached a US$1 billion valuation in 2021.

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