Two months into the new year, we have decided to make a synthetic overview of the FinTech developments that were born in 2019 and predict the ways they will affect the industry in 2020.

New partnerships and cooperation agreements

Numerous neobanks and financial service providers have been establishing new partnerships and cooperation agreements with an aim to enrich the existing service range and improve their market offer. The big tech and other popular challenger banks pioneered this trend and the newcomers did not take long to follow. This is expected to provide more opportunities and increase the level of interaction within the FinTech community, giving even more space for innovation.

Open Banking

The recent PSD2 marked the beginning of an Open Banking revolution that is still on its initial phase. However, the pace of change is steady and there are all the signs that customer experience and FinTech products will continue to undergo groundbreaking upgrades. Service providers are getting access to vast amounts of data that was prior only available to big players. This way they have a better chance to leverage their potential and introduce new intelligent products to their customers.

RegTech

There is no industry out there that has been subject to the same level of technological change in the last few years. Yet, it has also become a victim of extensive regulations that refer to risk, compliance and legal matters. This called for innovative solutions and products that would reshape the regulatory environment of the banking and finance industry. At the end of the day, in order to create services that serve consumers’ needs, FinTechs have to first streamline the core operational processes.

Libra

While Apple has already released its card, the launch of Facebook’s new cryptocurrency Libra is scheduled for this year. It is expected that big companies will continue to come up with FinTech developments that have a great potential in enlarging their product offering and bringing more commercial value through attracting new customers.

Neobanks

Neobanks continue to impress the public with the growing number of customers using their services worldwide. Starling is currently at around 1 million customers, while Revolut has more than 8 million. Neobanks have come to change the way financial services are created and distributed, and have already gained a loyal customer base, which is expected to continue growing in the future.