A few weeks ago, we started thinking about a simple question that turned into a sprawling project — what exactly defines a fintech? There's no one right answer, and we wanted to understand how the term is evolving and what that means for all the players involved.
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| | | | A few weeks ago, we started thinking about a simple question that turned into a sprawling project — what exactly defines a fintech? There's no one right answer, and we wanted to understand how the term is evolving and what that means for all the players involved.
With Wall Street banks talking up their own tech initiatives, new players like neobanks and roboadvisers raking in huge chunks of VC cash; and noise about tech giants like Amazon and Apple extending their powerful consumer brands into the world of finance, it's nearly impossible to keep track.
So Shannen Balogh and Dan DeFrancesco polled 44 insiders at Wall Street firms, buzzy newcomers, and some of the startup world's biggest backers to get their take.
The responses provide perspective on how the most powerful players view up-and-coming technology. That's crucial if you want to understand how incumbents are tackling the buy or build question, and for unpacking what's truly a disruptor and what's really just a fancy app.
Some said that "fintech" isn't enough to capture what's really going on, and that there's a serious need for more precise terms. One pointed out that the first ATMs in the 1960s could be counted as the official birth of fintech. And several even argued that the term needs to be retired.
"People who are now saying, 'Well, I run a fintech company,' are going to sound as goofy as people saying, I run an internet company or a consumer internet cloud company or a mobile company," said Matt Harris, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures.
Here's how startups, incumbents, and backers are thinking about the intersection of finance and tech. - Execs at Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and JPMorgan talked a lot about partnerships. Some said they've been investing in fintech before it was named, and some argued that because of all the teaming up going on, the term fintech should be obsolete. You can see their full responses here.
- Investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Point72 had a wide range of opinions. Some said we're entering a new wave — think of it as fintech 2.0 — which will mean wide integration of financial technology across industries like transportation to healthcare. One said that "fintech" has really come to mean digital financial services startups — so companies like Chime, Robinhood and Affirm. Here's everything the 14 investors said.
- Execs at 21 startups like Brex, Kabbage, and N26 told us what they think really counts as a fintech. Some said it's a sexy misnomer that's being abused. Here's how they map out the term.
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