Technology Companies

Plum, a London-based FinTech startup using AI-driven or “smart” chatbots to help people manage their finances, is betting that Facebook Messenger will become the go-to place for people to handle their money.

If you’re a young professional in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, the last thing you want to do is wait in long lines to sign up for a bank account or transfer money. You’ve got work to do, children to care for, and social responsibilities to which you need to attend. Getting tangled in old school banking bureaucracy only throws a wrench into your busy schedule. That’s why the people behind Timo, Vietnam’s first neobank, are offering an alternative to traditional banking.

Lending Times, an online publication that specializes in writing about Fintech lenders, reported the following: “In a pessimistic new report, researchers from Morgan Stanley have concluded that while Fintech companies style themselves as disruptors they will do more to strengthen than undermine incumbents in the long term.” The Morgan Stanley research stated, “As incumbents [e.g, financial institutions] pick up investment while VCs reduce investment, we tilt towards a world where incumbents are less susceptible to disintermediation and more likely to co-opt new technologies.”

According to Wall Street Journal, 3 in every 4 small businesses fail. In 2013, the Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sector employed 84 per cent of the total labour force in Nigeria, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. However, 75 per cent of all Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) fail in the first two years due to a lack of access to capital and poor business management.

Fintech, or financial technology, is rapidly gaining ground with consumers as a more accessible alternative to traditional payment and banking systems offered by financial firms. As new fintech tools and software emerge to disrupt the established model, financial services are improving, offering enhanced efficiency, speed and accountability.

Brazil is seeing a boom in financial technology, which, according to a new Goldman Sachs report, will chip away at the market share of the banks in the country.

According to a report in The New York Times, Goldman Sachs’ new report, “FinTech Brazil’s Moment,” shows that greater than 200 financial technology companies located in Brazil should generate a potential revenue collectively of about $24 billion over the course of the next ten years. Payments, lending and personal finance are three promising segments, as is insurance, Goldman Sachs said in the report.