I was watching the 1995 dark comedy classic, Four Rooms, the other day. From the beginning, it may seem like a collection of adventures of a bellhop named Ted. However there is a unifying theme, News Years Eve at a landmark hotel in Hollywood. The same can be said about the current fintech industry.
The unifying theme is that it is all running on codes. In fact, elements of fintech software development is so ubiquitous that you often see it in the news. Software is the basis of all of the following trends: artificial intelligence, cloud computing, mobile technologies & in-home smart devices, high-frequency algorithmic trading, blockchain & crypto, and IoT. Without the thousands of lines in code, the fintech industry would not exist. This means lots of fintech software development work.
Because of software, fintech technologies are more accessible than ever. This means if a company can successfully implement a certain technology, they will win over their competitors. In fact, a business has to try really hard not to adopt any fintech software and still be successful.
Artificial Intelligence
These days, artificial intelligence, machine or deep learning and neural network can be found in most scientific and tech blogs and articles. They may seem like the same thing but in fact, they are separate parts of the same collective. To clear it up, neural networks perform machine or deep learning. The result is artificial intelligence. This is one of the holy grails of fintech software development.
To be successful, a business would have to have access to a massive amount of data. The computer would have to organize them to become actionable data to draw insight from. At the moment, only large multinational corporations or one of the tech giants has access to such volumes of data. However, if the US government and the EU open their records, it will give startups and other smaller enterprises a level playing field.
Cloud Computing
Since the advent of cloud computing, Amazon has become one of the world’s most valuable companies and Microsoft found a second life with their Azure platform. This was a game changer because startups now have access to the same computing and storage capabilities as the multinationals. As a result, it allows new entrants to scale easier. It also meant that with so much data and personal information in the clouds, cybersecurity needs to be kicked up to the next level.
With the coming of 5G technology, cloud computing is getting ready to enter the next level. With less lag and better connectivity, moving and gathering data will be easier than ever. With easier access to real-time data, fintech players can start making good timely decisions.
Interacting with Voice
When was the last time you asked Siri a question? If the first thing you talk to when you get home is Alexa, then, you can feel how much voice is slowly replacing the mouse or even touchscreens. For the fintech software development players, the borders are only as far as your imagination. Imagine being able to ask about the status of your bank loan, or bank account balance. A trader may even use it to buy and sell stocks like he would on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The only difference is that he would not have to shout over other traders. In fact, your biggest worry might be your kids getting access to the interface. There was an amusing case where a young child used her parent’s Echo to order hundreds of dollars of toys.
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Tech like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have become game changers. They transformed the way people can interact with the environment around them. These virtual worlds meant that you don’t need solid objects to give a good presentation. Businesses have used them to entertain as well as inform. A real estate company can show off virtual properties to make sales before the first shovel full of dirt. A trader may use augmented reality to move funds with his hands making buying and selling fun.
Future businesses may use these technologies to create three dimensional representations of their data sets to give them insights that a 2D version might not be able to. In addition, businesses may hold virtual reality meetings to be able to unite partners from far-away lands and saving the planet with lower carbon footprints.
Robots, robots, robots
Thanks to robots, gone are the days where a person would sit there performing boring data entry. These days, automation is happening everywhere. You can use your email, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts to quickly fill in forms. Wall Street Trading companies are setting up conditions where buying and trading of stocks happen thousands of times a second. Amazon is using algorithms to automate millions of price adjustments each day. In fact, there are fintech tools where as long as you are using the same suite of tools, you can transition from one process to the next smoothly without any data loss. The system will take all the data from one place and enter them in the right places instantly. This means faster processes and less human error. All of this allows the human to concentrate on higher value tasks like critical thinking and relationship building.
More than just Bitcoin
Bitcoin may get a lot of press due to the value of each coin. However, it is the technology underneath the hood that has the fintech software development sector excited. It’s the blockchain. Blockchain is a supposedly secure record of all the transactions that had taken place within a system. It is decentralized. That means no single party has all the control. It is trustworthy as every participant has the same records so nobody can lie. It is secure because to break the encryption, it would take a massive amount of energy and computing. The only downside is that it can be quite slow. Think 10 transaction verifications per second to thousands from Visa and Mastercard.
However, the main thing are the smart contracts where everything is verified quickly, when compared to paper and people based processes in city hall, saving businesses time and money. With such properties, is there any doubt of its possibilities in fintech?
Sensors and gadgets
A few years back, the internet of things caught the tech world by storm. This is because there was a prediction that 21 billion devices would be connected to the internet by 2025. This presented a huge opportunity to make use of such huge amounts of data. For example, they might be temperature, measurements and locations. The insights gained from these sensors may be actioned to give customers better services or gain opportunities to make sales. The only problem is that these devices can be easily hacked into. Therefore, a secure environment is a paramount issue.
Even though fintech devices and fintech software have become a big part of our lives, this is just the beginning. With the adoption of 5G standard of internet, as well as advances in hardware, it will widen the possibility of fintech software development. The increased capabilities means that the sky’s the limit. With the future just around the corner, we can join Ted in his Hollywood hotel and ring in the New Year.
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