Personal identity: Bringing control and enjoyment to finance
No two humans are the same, and FinTechs are beginning to reflect this through revolutionary offerings. One of our clients, Hong Kong-based Mox, gives its customers personalized insights on their spending. Another client from Europe, Doconomy, is literally changing the world by empowering the climate-conscious to understand the impact of their spending. And helping underbanked communities thanks to our US project Daylight makes us very proud – approaching personalization from another angle by delivering the LGBTQ community experiences truly made for them.
Embedded finance: the next wave of fintech
We’ve written about it ourselves: embedded finance is all around us, and represents the biggest wave of fintech innovation on the horizon. Soon, financial services will no longer be associated with a particular kind of business (banks), and will instead be add-on functionality that businesses enable as necessary.
Cledara (who just raised $3.4M!) are a client of ours in the space. A few years back we helped build their app in a short turnaround time, and the collaboration has continued ever since! They provide a simple subscription management UI that runs on top of an existing Banking as a Service (BaaS) provider and thus ease the life of many business owners.
“Buy now, pay later” (BNPL) is another market segment we’ve written about extensively. What makes them “embedded” is that companies – like our client Twisto – embed loans (a traditional financial product) into E-commerce payment flows.The market has seen faster growth than expected, with Zip acquiring both Twisto and Spotii, and Square surprising markets with its acquisition of AfterPay for a staggering $29B. Current valuations for BNPL providers are enormous, which proves the widespread consumer interest for their offerings.
Privacy: ever important
With more data being gathered than ever, data security is a growing concern. This is fuelling the explosive optimism for cryptocurrencies, which we’re thrilled to be supporting.
How exactly will they integrate into our daily lives? Well, that depends on verdicts from regulators over the next few years. Nevertheless, we’re excited for the prospects of AdaLite, our passion-project-turned-spin-off. It’s become the leading wallet for the Cardano blockchain’s cryptocurrency called Ada.
At Vacuumlabs, we’re looking for new challenges not only within the crypto space, but in the wider fintech landscape as well. If these trends show anything, it’s that both crypto and fintech produce new opportunities and new products every single day.
For a deeper dive into each of these trends, go ahead and give Marcel’s episode a listen over on Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify or here:
