Over two jam-packed days at this year’s Money20/20 USA event, event delegates and WorldFirst embarked on “The Journey to the Future of Money”. While on this journey, it was certainly made clear early on that customer-driven Fintech is emerging as a key driving force for business innovation.

Money20/20 USA saw 3,400 companies from 88 countries participating in the discussion of forward-thinking topics led by 400 speakers. Topics covered included the platform-driven evolution of commerce, how emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Cloud are transforming business, and ways in which financial organisations can stand out in an increasingly competitive fintech environment. By the close of the conference, delegates were equipped with the ability to get to the heart of the sustainable and commercial changes needed to drive their business forward.

Our takeaways

Spotlight on Asia

Topics of particular interest to WorldFirst were the spotlight on Asia and how a drive to improve the customer experience is innovating Commerce across multiple business sectors.

The spotlight on payments in Asia throughout Money 20/20 aligns perfectly with WorldFirst’s business direction. Asia is a key market for WorldFirst, especially since we became an Ant Financial company. Douglas Feagin, (President, International Business Group, Ant Financial) spoke highly of the importance of WorldFirst in Ant’s growth in and outside of China during his fireside chat on stage.

Improving CX

Many speakers at the conference homed in on the importance of improving the customer experience (CX), and how advances in technology, engineering and the company’s culture can greatly impact the firm’s approach to CX as a whole. Brands such as Amazon, Grasshopper Bank and Intuit are attempting to walk in the shoes of their customers by taking heed of qualitative feedback, rather than just crunching statistics. By developing a greater understanding of their customers, brands are now attempting to reverse engineer their sales and technology processes, rather than the other way around.

Historically, processes such as making payments, transferring money or settling invoices have always been considered purely transactional – the experience for those involved wasn’t really a focus. But, as new payment methods and solutions enter the marketplace and Open Banking enriches the fintech landscape, the perception of payments is changing: it needs to be a part of the end-to-end customer experience.

This arguably long-overdue focus that brands are now increasingly placing on customers is creating unique financial solutions that solve unique challenges. At the event, Uber showcased their “driver wallet”, and how it solves the problem of providing their drivers with instant access to funds by grouping transactions and provides instant payments to the driver.

This customer-driven approach to business has always rung true for the wider WorldFirst team. Since the start, we’ve strived to place the customer at the forefront of any innovations. We’ve recently introduced a new customer-centric transparent pricing model that solves many of the notorious challenges of the wider FX industry, including opaque pricing and varying rates that favour the broker over the customer. We hope this helps to set a precedent across FX and drive positive change that makes it more accessible businesses and individuals across the world.

The future of fintech

Fintech’s are discovering better ways for the world to use, spend, borrow and move money. Revolutionaries, dreamers, trailblazers, innovative thinkers and fearless leaders from across the ecosystem are moving the industry forward at full speed.

The future of customer-led financial services will continue to be directly impacted by the growth of technological innovation, regulatory shifts and payments, many of which we experienced first-hand at Money 20/20 Las Vegas. We are now looking forward to Money 2020 Asia in Singapore in March 20/20, a conference set to be equally, if not more compelling than this one!