The first mile problem in Fintech
medium.com
medium.com
This. Right now the costs to start a fintech company that actually does something disruptive is tremendously high and the regulatory hurdles don't stop. Luckily there are a few startups paving the way but it's still not enough.
I'm writing this not so much to make a pitch (of course that's part of it) but to point out what I hope other fintech companies do: package UX and compliance together and sell it for a reasonable cost. It will help the whole industry explode into the potential investors are clearly seeing in it.
Is there anything that has changed that changes the legal landscape which would allow for any innovation? The SEC announced that it was considering change to the standards for being an 'accredited investor' but as far as I'm aware, ultimate didn't go anywhere. This would have made crowdfunding platforms much more tantalizing but didn't seem like it would have affected the larger marketplace.
Money laundering is very much still a crime, and shows no chance of changing anytime soon, but the requirements borne out of that are onerous (KYC) and most banks are not going to keep an account that has large sums of money going in and out of it open for very long.
The problem with finance was never the technology (Western Union's person-to-person money transfer service dates back to 1871!) but always the regulation, which, again, shows no evidence that anything will change.
[1]https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full [2]https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses
1. Ubiquity and mobility of the internet. Paypal was designed for when the internet was new and barely anyone was using it. Now, everyone is on the internet and on it constantly with devices that have way more powerful. Now is the time for just about any innovation that was promised but not fulfilled in the first dot com bust to have another shot.
2. Stirrings all around - talk to any bank and ask them if they think financial technology is about to break out. They're pretty much all convinced it is because they see it pecking at the edges. Alternate lending just has 2 IPOs 10 days apart (on deck, lending club), crypto currencies are surprisingly stable given what they are and how new they are, and new payment tech is gaining traction (apple pay, google wallet, square, venmo, etc). It all starts small but it's gaining traction faster than it used to, and momentum is everything.
That's what I've seen and what I've heard as the two biggest reasons. Essentially, reach and momentum.
e.g. Bitcoin conspicuously fails at this. There is nothing the typical consumer can do with it that they can't already do with credit cards or PayPal, and those offer chargebacks and rollbacks in case of problems. Even remittances turn out to cost more in practice.
What can you do that existing centralised systems don't already do? And remember that Shit Happens, and rollback is considered an essential function by the trepidatious.