Part 1 — Fintech: The Future is Happening Now
Over the past six years in the US, as the head of fintech sales for IDEMIA, I have had the chance to work with all market leaders including Square, Stripe, Robinhood, Marqeta, SoFi, Galileo, Varo and more than fifty others. Now back to Europe, I want to share in this series of posts my experience living the birth of this wonderful fintech industry.
Back in France, I often read articles announcing the imminent arrival of fintechs. Yet in the United States, as in Europe by the way, fintechs are already present in every day’s life. A few examples:
Let’s take a look at the Apple appstore which are the most downloaded apps in the finance category. Obviously the appstore is used by everyone, we are not talking about some kind of geeks’ platform… If we put aside the tax apps (tax season), the results are clear: the first six are all fintechs, as well as 9 of the first 10!
Another approach: the financial side, the valuation: Square is more valued than American Express and their B2C division (Cash App) alone is now worth more than all Capital One [1], the giant of credit cards. As for Stripe, the online payment leader led by two brothers whose eldest is 32 years old, their valuation of $36 billion made them the most valued US private company across all sectors, and they just hit yesterday a $115 billion valuation in “secondary market” transactions! [2]
One last insight: personal loans without collateral were issued at 38% by fintechs in 2019, a level reached in just five years! [3]
In the streets, on television, at the Super Bowl advertising for fintechs is everywhere…
So no doubt, in the field of banking (deposit and savings accounts), credit, stock trading, wealth management, money transfers, processing and obviously crypto fintechs already enjoy an essential position. Just consider the recent role of Robinhood!
I will leave the last word of this post to Jamie Dimon, CEO of JM Morgan Chase, America’s largest bank with over $3 trillion in assets, who said in terms I wouldn’t dare quote here that his bank “should absolutely be scared s…less about fintech threat”. [4]
In the next post, we will consider how it happened, drawing a parallel with a well know disrupter.
— All opinions shared in these posts are my own —
- [1] Cash App’s Surge During Covid-19 Pandemic Fuels Square Stock, The Wall Street Journal, Peter Rudegeair, Sept. 2, 2020
- [2] Investors Are Now Valuing Stripe At $115 Billion, Forbes, Jeff Kauflin, Feb. 17, 2021
- [3] FinTechs Continue to Drive Personal Loan Growth, TransUnion, Feb. 21, 2019
- [4] Jamie Dimon says JPMorgan Chase should absolutely be ‘scared s — -less’ about fintech threat, CNBC.com, Jan. 15, 2021
