Web Summit 2022 wrap-up #1: FINTECH 2023: WHAT NEXT?

Welcome to our series of articles on the recent Web Summit 2022, a premier event in the tech industry. In this series, we will be highlighting some of the most exciting and interesting presentations, panels, and events that took place at the conference. From keynotes by industry leaders to breakout sessions covering the latest trends and developments in technology, there was no shortage of thought-provoking content at this year's conference. We hope you enjoy reading about the Web Summit 2022 as much as we enjoyed attending it!

FINTECH 2023: WHAT NEXT?

At the 2022 Web Summit that took place last November, in a talk led by the journalist Nick Huber, Carolyn Rodz (Founder at Hello Alice), Rodolphe Ardant (Co-founder & CEO at Spendesk) and Tegan Kline (Co-founder at Edge & Node) discussed the future of the fintech market in the incoming year.

2021 was the year of growth, what’s next for Fintech in 2023?

After a successful record growth in 2021, it seems that the fintech industry is facing tough times. But what is the reality of the fintech market, its challenges, and opportunities?

 If we look at the current market, fintechs were founded because the banks were incapable or did not want to take advantage of technology. According to Rodolphe Ardant, this is just the beginning of the fintech world: indeed, the public traded fintech is on average 12 years old while the legacy financial services in 90 years old. Moreover, Tegan Kline explains that there are a lot of opportunities in the fintech market, for example taking advantages of interest rates growing. We are just at the beginning of the disruption in the finance world.

 In the past 10 years, we saw many different business models emerge, and some business models will come up stronger after the crisis (such as B2B payment or banking software). The market should come back, and fintechs should ask themselves how to work with the major players in finance (especially banks and goverments) and not against them, while keeping focusing on individuals’ needs.

TRENDS OF FINTECH 2023: FREEDOM OF CHOICE

According to Carolyn Rodz, the reality of the market is that we all want the freedom of choice, and this is fintech is all about. It is hard to predict how the market will respond in 2023, but the valuations may come down within the fintech industry, the users will remain, which would leave a lot of opportunities to get into emerging businesses.

For Tegan Kline, there is a great opportunity within the NFT space within cryptos, and we could likely see a lot of fintech getting into that space. In addition, we would see the emergence of fintech using the metaverse, decentralizing and giving the power back to the users.

For Carolyn Rodz, the focus should be on anything that support open banking, community and human engagement (such as identity verification, data transferring, …).

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Minh Q. Tran, minh@mandalorepartners.com