This year’s Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas was buzzing with energy that exceeded our expectations. There were many hot topics over the course of 4 days, but Embedded Finance was by far the talk of the show.
One major example of the digitation of Fintech is Embedded Finance. Embedded Finance is when non-financial companies offer financial products and services that are typically provided by financial service companies. Some examples of Embedded Finance are payment services like Apple Pay or Google Pay. Another example is finance services like an Amazon branded credit card and brands like Peloton embedding services like BNLP (buy now pay later). Businesses can now offer credit to customers (other businesses or end consumers) without going to a bank or credit card company.
One thing we know for sure is that change is certain and in the world of payments, there is a lot of change, and it is fast. From splitting payments on your own credit card, which Amex does today, to Klarna that offers the new trend in BNLP, these options are rapidly growing and being adopted by consumers. Consumers have growing expectations of digital payments which has forced the industry to shift to alternative payments technology, with real-time payments, blockchain, and digital currencies.
Another area of focus this year is in the underbanked. We are seeing many new FinTech’s emerge with options to provide credit to underserved Americans and believe that trend will continue to grow considering the state of the economy, a looming recession and rapidly increasing inflation. There was a ton of focus around safe data and cybersecurity, fraud, regulation, and policy and we would be remiss to not mention that ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) seemed to be in every conversation. Crypto is always in the spotlight particularly around crypto regulations and “who’s disrupting whom”? Web 3, metaverse identity and privacy were all the buzz and the list goes on.
As always, there were many takeaways, and we had a lot of fun seeing our colleagues in the industry and look forward to seeing everyone in Las Vegas in 2023!
