a16z Podcast: Fintech Revolution or Evolution? by a16z published on 2016-06-22T23:57:22Z How far along are we towards the vision of a "cashless, cardless, walletless, frictionless future" for fintech? We're not quite there yet, argued BuzzFeed News technology reporter Charlie Warzel in a recent feature story -- for which he got a microchip implanted in his finger while trying to go cashless for an entire month. But as revolutionary as the chip tech seems, the reality may be that fintech innovation is much more incremental, evolutionary, and still only disintermediating the physical world than truly doing new things (given what's natively possible with web, cloud, and mobile). Will that change now that Apple Pay is coming to the web? Speaking of, what is the platform and what is the product? Especially given a highly fragmented digital wallet and payments market (Warzel eventually ended up with 64 apps just to get through one month). And where, exactly, are the banks in all this? The problem, observes Warzel -- who is joined by a16z Partners Alex Rampell and Angela Strange in this episode of the a16z Podcast on all things fintech, payments, wallets, and more -- is that the customers/consumers aren't at the center of any of this. And that's a big deal given the (lack of) trust and expectations for user experience that savvy users will have for all their tech. Genre Technology Comment by dapic jones apple and google have had monopoly control over their platform and the government does not do anything about all this anti-competitive anti-trust behavior. why is our government so asleep over tech ? 2016/10/26 20:23:48 +0000 Comment by dals You should check Nubank startup in Brazil which has done just that: turned a credit card into a desired / status object 2016/10/20 18:37:47 +0000 Comment by Sangye Ngawang So most of the industry is either implementing or research crypto-currency spin-offs and you guys aren't mentioning the zillion products that are being produced as options to pay this way. Interesting - but still i thought the whole analysis of consumer needs vs cash, payment ecosystems etc ... just leaving such an obvious gap. 2016/08/11 20:15:22 +0000 Comment by Tala Shivute I'm in Namibia, Southern Africa and there's are a lot of things, like send and receive money through my phone that I can't do in the states. The interesting thing is that it's being done by the banking mainstream. For instance M-Pesa in Kenya was started by Vodafone, a large telecommunications company not a nimble startup. Here in Namibia the leader in the space is FNB, again a traditional bank. I think the minimal regulation makes easier to create customer focused solutions down here. But I am watching crypto carefully and am looking forward to see how it will change the Fintech on the continent. 2016/06/29 19:00:24 +0000 Comment by deditz https://coffee.foldapp.com/ 2016/06/24 19:38:17 +0000
