Despite the once-in-100-year challenges of dealing with a global pandemic, the Australian fintech industry is sustaining its revenue base, with more paying customers and plans for future global expansion. Fintechs say this moment of crisis is driving a step-change in consumer digital adoption and has adapted quickly to grasp new opportunities. This has resulted in a significant increase in consumer digital payments and transactions and the rise of the “buy now pay later” sector, which has expanded at pace.
However, the industry continues to face its usual headwinds of regulatory concerns and competitive pressure. And, now in a post-pandemic world, fintechs must also contend with the added difficulties emerging from the crisis – issues such as tightening capital and the concern that consumers will return to the “safety” of major institutions for their financial services needs.
There is also widespread concern that large financial institutions have pivoted to focus on their customers, redeploying staff away from innovation, slowing the momentum of fintech initiatives. Before the global pandemic hit, there was a genuine feeling that, at last, financial services innovation collaboration had reached a ‘tipping point’.