Isn’t it convenient to pay for virtually anything online? Digital Currency Flow is powering massive opportunity for strategic acquisition in 2017 as the urgency of consumer expectations for payment to be mobile, personalized, customizable and accessible 24/7 drives M&A.
In addition to payments technology, anything facilitating automation and improved efficiency of banking, insurance, POS, wealth management, robo-advisors, or lending, are all areas slated to see increased activity in M&A. These technologies will greatly impact the front, middle and back office of every brokerage, bank, insurance company, healthcare exchange and all things commerce driven.
The growing influence of Distributed Ledger Technology will continue unabated for the foreseeable future, too. As Blockchain also extends its impact on fintech, expect to see continued partnerships from many industry leading companies. The Federal Reserve Board published a paper recently stating that in the USA there are 600,000,000 daily financial transactions accounting for $12.2 trillion in exchanges for Payments, Clearing and Settlements. They anticipate that easily 20% improvement in costs can be wrung out through the use of newer technologies – no small number for enterprising companies focused on fintech.
Credit card companies are themselves becoming technology companies, as EMV chips finally come online in the US and the Internet of Things breaks open entirely new markets, driving deals up and down the payment chain.
Will the coming disruption reach Netflix vs. Blockbuster levels, or will current fintech companies make the leap? The tech firms acquired this year will help determine the course of an industry; and if you’re in this sector, you’ll want to take advantage of this trend to be on the winning side.