Society has always been towards financiers. There has always been tension between the have-nots and have-yachts. For millennia people have sneered at ‘ ’ money lenders, while admiring more ‘honourable’ professions from farming to art. hostile parasitic But nothing could be further from the truth. Before the ascent of finance, society was more hostile. Hunter-gatherers didn’t trade, they’d raid. Before the ascent of financial technology, there was no river of progress—there was a dam of . stagnation Technology was in finance to build systems to record government finances, pay taxes, and to manage agricultural production. Those early financial innovations opened the floodgates to a river of human creativity—just as the of the 1600s spawned the industrial revolution of the 1700s. The ascent of FinTech spawned the ascent of man. first used financial revolution While the ascent of FinTech is just beginning, the era of traditional banks may be ending. Despite banks like Goldman Sachs higher than the GDP of Croatia and Ecuador, banking expert Arvind Sankaran “We're witnessing the creative destruction of financial services.” Or as the Co-founder of the Bank Innovators Council, JP Nicols, , “Banks have to upgrade themselves, or risk being burnt to the ground.” earning a revenue can see puts it Whether traditional banks are at risk or not, FinTech is definitely changing the financial industry. If you’re a financial wizard looking to master the universe or simply wanting to take care of your personal finances, it has never been more to understand the history of FinTech. important 9,000 BC: The Beginning Of Finance - Man & Money When was money invented? How did the use of money progress? Early man would goods they had, for goods they needed. 9,000 BC: barter In China, people began using . This was the start of commodity money (gold, silver, bronze, salt etc.). 1,400 BC: bronze to trade with The was minted in modern day Turkey. 600 BC: first ever ‘official’ currency The banknote was used in its by the Tang Dynasty. 600s AD: early form The , first gold coin widely accepted across Europe was minted. It encouraged international commerce. 1,250 AD: Florin The financial in Europe began. It included joint stock companies, insurance, and banking. 1600s AD: revolution Paper money was minted for the first time in when banknotes were printed in Sweden. 1,661 AD: Europe 1866: Modern FinTech - Government Assistance How did government investments and assistance pave the way for modern FinTech? The first transatlantic telegraph cable was , connecting New York, Paris, and London. 1866: laid The US Federal Reserve Banks developed the so they could transfer funds between them in real-time. 1918: Fedwire Funds Service In WWII, resources applied to developing and breaking codes for secure communication led to breakthroughs in computer science that would later be applied to FinTech. Alan Turing began his 1950s paper with, “ ” 1938 - 1945: Can machines think? Credit cards were . The first was launched in 1946 called the Charg-It card. It was followed in 1950 by The Diners Club card came out, in 1958 by the American Express, and by the Interbank Card Association was created (now Mastercard) in 1966. 1946: invented 1967: FinTech 2.0 - Traditional Financial Institutions After initial government resources encouraged the growth of FinTech, how did the traditional financial institutions capitalise on those developments? The movement toward digitisation began. The first ATM was by Barclays in the UK and the first handheld calculator was invented by Texas Instruments. 1967: invented The first Real-TIme Gross Settlement system was in America, allowing transactions between banks to happen in real-time and settle on a one-to-one basis. 1970: launched NASDAQ, the electronic stock exchange in the world was launched in New York. 1971: first (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) was founded, enabling financial institutions across the globe to send and receive secure transactions. 1973: SWIFT Online banking was in the USA. 1980: introduced Bloomberg was . It later became the world's most valuable private information services firm in the world. 1981: founded The first market crash occurred, caused, at least in part, by . 1987: program trading Citigroup launched the Financial Services Technology Consortium project, which is where the term ‘ ’ was derived. 1993: FinTech In 1995 Wells Fargo online account checking on the World Wide Web. 1995: provided Confinity (currently PayPal) is . 1998: launched There were 8 US banks that had . 2001: more than 1 million online customers ING Direct and HSBC Direct, the completely online banks with no physical branches, were launched in the UK. 2005: first Mobile money, M-Pesa, was to Kenya by Vodafone. Within 3-4 years, the majority of Kenya’s GDP was flowing through M-Pesa. 2007: introduced The iPhone was . Now the power of a modern smartphone the power of a room-sized IBM mainframe from the 1970s. 2007: launched dwarfs 2008: FinTech 3.0 & 3.5 - Startups & Emerging Markets How are traditional financial institutions giving way to startups? Are emerging markets seeing more innovations than developed markets? How did the GFC lead to a growth in FinTech? Which are the most significant cryptocurrencies? How did Google and Apple enter the financial system? The FinTech sector received an following the GFC for three reasons. Firstly, many employees in the financial sector were laid off, so they went to work at FinTech startups. Secondly, after the GFC many regulatory changes were made which significantly increased the cost of compliance, so many companies looked to FinTech to provide more efficient solutions. Finally, the trust in major financial institutions decreased and people looked for alternative options. 2008: influx of resources was launched by Satoshi Nakamoto. It helped pave the way for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. 2009: Bitcoin Contactless cards were introduced for . 2010: quicker and easier payments Google Google Wallet. 2011: develops Apple Apple Pay. 2014: launched The cryptocurrency Ethereum was , featuring Smart Contracts. 2015: introduced Yu’E Bao, a Money Market Fund, was launched by the Chinese company Alibaba. Within 9 months it the world’s fourth-largest MMF (after Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab). 2015: became Data flow has increased dramatically. From 2013-2018, as much was laid as in the previous 150 years. 2018: undersea cable Global FinTech investment rose to a . 2018: record $111.8 Billion 2019+: The Future Of FinTech - BigTech & The AI Revolution In 1994, Bill Gates famously , “Banking is necessary, banks are not.” At the time the moguls of the financial world didn’t heed his warning. Now, traditional financial institutions are nervous. stated In 2014, J.P. Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, was aware of the imminent change. “Silicon Valley is coming,” he . “When I go to Silicon Valley… They all want to eat our lunch. Every single one of them is going to try.” said By 2019 we know it’s not just Silicon Valley who’s coming after the ‘lunch’ of traditional financial institutions. Nobody knows that better than the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma. He started his technology company Alibaba, and as we saw above, they created Yu’E Bao which became . the world's largest Money Market Fund Jack Ma . While modern FinTech saw startups competing with traditional financial institutions, TechFin will see companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Alibaba competing with banks. coined the term ‘TechFin’ We knew that FinTech would improve the technology of the financial system. But TechFin will rebuild the entire system with new technology. Citigroup put the new fear succinctly in their 2018 report , “When bankers worry about the future, the fear is BigTech, not FinTech.” The Bank Of The Future Bankers may be worried about BigTech, but the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, is predicting something that could have far more impact: a powered by artificial intelligence and hyper-scalability. 4th industrial revolution What will that revolution look like? Former Ceo of Deutsche Bank, John Cryan, , “In our bank we have people doing work like robots. Tomorrow we will have robots behaving like people.” However, we aren’t as good at predicting the impact of innovations as we often believe. As states: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. predicted Amara’s law In 1867 when the transatlantic cable was built, nobody could have predicted that it would lead to credit cards, mobile money, and Bitcoin. Whatever the future of FinTech or TechFin brings, it’s sure to rise beyond even the most creative imaginations. And civilisation is going to ascend with it.
