Introduction

In 2020, this trend gained tremendous speed and is not going to slow down in the near future. Financial services are starting to operate behind the scenes, becoming an integral part of non-financial products. Embedded

Embedded Finance

The economy has forged into developing new user scenarios fueled by basic human insights. Firstly, people do not like (and often are not capable of) paying for high-value goods or services in one installment. Secondly, having already made a purchase, many are worried that something wrong might happen.

Hybrid Products

2020 undermined predictive analytics models based on historical data. Both people and companies have seen rapid changes in their financial situations: this was the period of financial trauma and recovery alternating at unexpected times. Information was becoming outdated so quickly that it needed to be tracked in nearly real-time for decision-making.

Smart Real-Time Data

2020 has rocked our financial discipline even further. It goes beyond the loss of a job or income. The crisis has forced people to look for new ways to maintain and increase their savings.

The growth of investing among unskilled investors has led to a rise in solutions like Robinhood.

Self-Driving Finance

The pandemic has led to a sharp increase in online payments and exacerbated the issue of transaction costs. While businesses complained about Visa and Mastercard's excessive fees, next-generation payment providers picked up steam.

Account-to-Account Payments

Following China, in 2020, dozens of countries announced were developing their own digital currencies or exploring this option. At the same time, regulators tightened control over cryptocurrencies, requiring crypto services to identify users the same way as banks do.

Digital Assets

The past year forced traditional financial institutions to accelerate infrastructure upgrades and the switch to digital systems. This resulted in simplified customization and integration of the digital infrastructure. In the short term, this trend includes low-code developments (i.e., requiring little coding knowledge), and in the long term ― no-code solutions. We are already seeing

Low-Code Fintech

2020 acted as a stress test for product innovation and business models. And European fintech companies passed the test with dignity: they managed increased load in online services well, provided the infrastructure for government support, and continued to evaluate and

Summary

Fintech Trends:
What to Expect in 2021

In this study, Digital Horizon experts analyzed global trends that were unfolding in the European market and tried to predict how they would develop and reinforce each other.

Alan Vaksman

Vlad Tropko

Founder, Managing Partner
of Digital Horizon

Managing Director
of Digital Horizon VC

Head of product consulting
of Digital Horizon Venture Builder

Victoria Arinstein

RESEARCH

Trends that had started earlier were accelerated even more in 2020. The year also highlighted certain systemic financial problems that the market has not found the solutions to yet.

The main factors that affected the global financial markets were: