Thursday, December 12, 2024

What is FinTech?

What is FinTech?

It doesn’t matter if you’re shopping, paying bills, investing or saving money – the buzzword FinTech and everything related is here to stay, but what is FinTech?

FinTech, or Financial Technology, refers to technology used in our financial services today. Some of the best things about this kind of tech, is that it’s made to improve, digitalize and simplify different processes in digital financial service. It can be payment methods, ways to save money or how to get a loan. 

To give you a picture of what FinTech is all about, we’ve gathered some examples of FinTech companies from the real world. 

Venmo – Fast and Easy Payment

Venmo is an app for fast and easy payments between friends and businesses. It started up in 2009. This technology allows you to pay almost anywhere, and you don’t need to use a credit card, debit card or bank account to complete a payment. You can just do it through the app. 

The technology is based on making it easy to pay, get paid and shop. Instead of having to make a withdrawal from a minibank or going into your online bank account to make a transaction to your friends, you can simply pay them through the app. It’s also possible to personalize your transactions with emojis, messages or gift wrapping.

Venmo makes it easy paying your debts or splitting bills. You can also get a debit card, and shop directly from different businesses that have a Venmo account. Venmo also offers debit cards, cash back and you can invest in crypto. 

Axo Finans – Comparison Websites

Another financial technology that is simplifying processes and making our lives easier, is comparison websites like Axo Finans. This kind of FinTech makes it a lot easier for customers to find a great deal, and is also an important part of how Axo is innovative. They  have turned the table, and made the lenders fight for the customer, not the other way around.

Instead of being a typical bank where your clients have to spend hours filling out forms to get a loan, or look into all their opportunities in the online banks, they send one application and get the best possible offer they can get. 

How does it work? Companies like Axo are loan brokers, which means they cooperate with banks, or lenders. When you send an application to Axo, they will forward your application to all the lenders they’re cooperating with. Relevant lenders will then send back their best offers. Then Axo picks out the best of these offers and presents them to you. You choose whether you want to accept one of these offers or not. 

Verifai – Bank Identification Verification

Another FinTech company that’s making our lives easier is Verifai. This company is making it easier to identify your customers, when identification is needed, and working towards making identity fraud impossible. Verifai is a company that develops and supports smart identity software. 

Verifai were established in 2017 by Belsimple who needed a faster way to identify their customers. Since there was no such technology that checked off all their boxes regarding speed, security, privacy and conversions, they decided to develop it themselves. Therefore Verifai were started. 

The software launched to the world in 2021 aiming to be flexible, comprehensive and easy to use. Not just for you as a business, but also for your customers. The software integrates with your existing system and can be customized to your company’s needs, and it is made to fit all businesses no matter size. This means that Verifai applies to both banks and financial services, but also so much more. 

Simply put: Verifai allows you (your organization) to verify the identity of your customers digitally. The system can check the authenticity of identification documents from over 130 countries, and also check that the person providing them actually is the owner, with biometric checks. The best thing about Verifai is that you can implement it as a part of your organization’s identity check in a secure, fast and user-friendly way.

Fintech – our future

We live in a world with a lot of technology that’s supposed to make our lives easier. FinTech is one of these kinds of technologies and looking at what we already have, there’s no doubt that we’ve already developed many things that do just that. 

With fast payment methods, easy and secure identification verification and simple ways to apply for a loan, we already have a pretty simple life. The big question now is: what’s to come in the future? It’s hard to say, but one thing is certain: We haven’t reached the top yet.