You may not think you are participating in a revolutionary experience when you pay for your subscriptions with bitcoin using the Patricia refill service. But since the advent of fintech, short for financial technology, the financial services industry has been turned on its head.
Fintech has been used for many of the newest technological developments — from payment apps like PayPal even to cryptocurrency. In combining the latest technology with financial services, fintech has helped businesses majorly start-ups to disrupt the industry and provide better financial services to businesses and individuals alike.

SO, WHAT IS FINTECH?
Fintech is a term used to describe financial technology. It’s an umbrella term for any technology used to augment, streamline, digitize or disrupt traditional financial services.
Fintech refers to the use of advanced technology to provide financial services to consumers and businesses from buying and selling cryptocurrency, to authenticating electronic payments, to rendering financial aid. The global fintech market is expected to reach $310 billion by the end of 2022.

FINTECH VS TRADITIONAL BANKING; WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?
While traditional banks are generally focused on the interests of their shareholders, fintech promotes the needs of its consumers. This raises the bar for traditional banks, but it also provides opportunities for banks themselves to leverage this valuable technology.
By investing in start-ups or partnering with them to provide innovative products and services to customers, traditional banks are taking advantage of fintech for better services.

BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS (B2B) FINTECH SERVICES
These are designed to help businesses work to serve each other more efficiently. And this technology is disrupting many different sectors, like cash management.
For example, CoralPay’s innovative payment solution has successfully incorporated the integration of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) payments on Point of Sales, otherwise known as “USSD on POS” and on the e-commerce websites “USSD on Web”, allowing Bank and mobile money operator’s customers to use their respective shortcodes to pay for goods and services whilst addressing the challenges of ‘card not present transactions, safety, card network unavailability and reach, in the most unique, safe and convenient way, bridging the gap created by network and infrastructure limitations.

BUSINESS-TO-CONSUMER (B2C) FINTECH SERVICES.
These are tools designed to help businesses provide better services to consumers and/or increase their bottom lines. Great examples of this type of technology are online banks, such as Ally, and even your online banking portal. These technologies have been disrupting banking and other B2C industries for years. Technologies like Paypal fall into this category as well.

CONSUMER-TO-CONSUMER (C2C) FINTECH SERVICES.
This type of service is designed to help consumers interact with each other. One of the best examples of these services is Venmo. This technology has revolutionized the way people exchange money. Rather than trading cash or checks, consumers can send money directly to each other, instantly and with no charge. Even Google has made inroads in this space by allowing Gmail users to attach cash directly to emails. Technologies like this are changing how we manage our finances by reducing our dependency on physical cash.

FINTECH EXAMPLES
So how is fintech being used in 2021, and what are some of its traditional uses?

1. Crowdfunding Platforms
Companies like GoFundMe and others are an example of the range of fintech outside of traditional banking.
Crowdfunding platforms allow internet and app users to send or receive money from others on the platform and have allowed individuals or businesses to pool funding from a variety of sources all in the same place.
Instead of having to go to a traditional bank for a loan, it is now possible to go straight to investors for support of a project or company. And while their applications range from family and friends funding to fan and patron funding, the number of crowdfunding platforms have multiplied over the years.

2. Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency and blockchain are hallmark examples of fintech in action.
Cryptocurrency exchanges like Patricia connect users to buying or selling cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. And while cryptocurrency and even blockchain may be somewhat controversial uses of fintech, they have certainly taken parts of the investment world by storm in recent years.

3. Mobile Payments
It seems as though everyone with a smartphone uses some form of mobile payments. In fact, according to Statista data, the global mobile payment market is on track to surpass $1 trillion in 2019.
Using increasingly sophisticated technology, services have emerged that allow consumers to exchange money and payments online or on mobile devices like the Patricia refill service, etc.

CLOSING NUGGETS
Fintechs are revolutionizing how much is sent, saved, budgeted, and even spent. Before now, we all had to use piggy banks for savings and navigate excel spreadsheets/journals to keep track of our finances. But after the fintech revolution prompted the development of financial services apps, now we can easily and efficiently keep track of our income, expenses, savings, and even investments using tools that have revolutionized the way we think about our money.

Now it is important enough that the quality of the application or software is at the highest level. For example, financial software development, now one of those niches in which quality must be respected 100% because money and user data will be at stake

interesting read , i strongly believe Fintechs should be utilized on a broader scale by the majority of the african populace although compromises such as hacks and endpoint security compromises continue to pose as huge challenges as i previously read about Binance Hack. i mean if that can happen to those who are been looked up to what is the parameter that will then be employed for Nigerian Fintech organizations. i hope for the best and i try my best to be part of the solution rather than just pointing out the problem alone (which is also the beginning of finding a solution) finally my take is that fintech in Africa should engage more professionalism in their Security measures . see this https://arravo.co/email-security-and-encryption-definition-importance-and-more/