Corum Top Ten Disruptive Technology Trends 2016

But now let’s move on to the next part of our presentation, which is the framework through which we view the evolution of the market. We update these every year. We find it very useful to have an objective lens. A lot of the top ten trends and lists that you’ll see on the web are driven by vendors and they are driven by an agenda to serve the purposes of commerce and specific companies. That’s great, that’s how capitalism works. Our is really based on input from 25 people around the world, watching events, watching deals and trying to figure out where the big moves and trends are. We’ve pulled those heads together to go through the top ten tech trends, in detail, one by one, starting with our own John Norton on online exchanges.

Top Tech Trend #1: Online Exchanges

John Norton

Ebay and Amazon were early online exchange successes, bringing together buyers and sellers without the middleman. Twenty years later, targeted online exchanges address specific markets more effectively than their broad-based predecessors.

Craigslist can be seen as an index for these targeted exchanges. Pick a category - there is likely an Online Exchange built for it. “Tickets for sale” is a crowded space covered by Seatgeek, Stubhub, Seatwave and many others—classic disintermediators. Choosing a category and building an exchange is the easy part. Drawing enough participants to make an exchange viable is another matter. When your market has a dominant player it can be difficult to get a foothold, but they may be a potential acquirer. In the ticketing space, Ticketmaster has done four deals in just the last two years.

Larger exchanges will continue to diversify and grow through acquisition, taking out emerging competitive threats, but online exchanges breaking new ground in the enterprise space will be particularly attractive targets, as procurement departments find the same value in the model that consumers have.

Nat Burgess

Thank you, John. Next up from our Amsterdam office, Mark Johnson to talk about Digital Currency Flow.

Top Tech Trend #2: Digital Currency Flow

Mark Johnson

Payments M&A dominated Fintech transactions in 2015, and we believe this trend will continue in 2016.

Mobile Payments have finally become a reality. Apple Pay is now accepted by national retailers across the US and in Europe with collaborations with the largest card issuers. The other leading handset manufacturers and OS vendors are following suit such as Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and LG Pay. There is massive opportunity for banks, card issuers, and payments processors to deliver mobile payments to more global markets and a wider distribution of customers through acquiring payments technology vendors.

Banks are under threat by new entrants transforming the customer experience, and therefore commanding a higher market share of the total profits. Additionally, cross border payments inefficiencies remain, creating opportunities for new technology solutions.

And finally, digital payments continues to grow, driven by low costs, ease of use, and improved banking infrastructure.

This is a segment from Forecast 2016: Global Tech M&A Report (January) webcast. For more information, please visit Corum Group's Software M&A Webcast Archive