Is the future of Fintech Fast Food or Fine Dining?

I am a lawyer who works in the Fintech industry. Before joining PayAlly, I worked as a lawyer in several private practices for a number of years. So, you could say that I have been both an observer and a participant in the industry.

Although I cannot claim I coined the term, we can clearly see that there is a trend shifting companies from “Fintech” to “Fintrust”.

Initially, Fintech emerged to meet the needs of a new generation of consumers who have been moving away from what traditional banks have been offering. This introduced a number of technologies such as crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, and e-money. We have seen a lot of clever people with coding skills and knowledge of financial services creating solutions that had previously not existed in the payment services industry.

They have shaped this new landscape of payment providers. Naturally, the larger banks have taken advantage of this Fintech movement and have started to integrate the tech within their systems. But in this rush to innovate, one very important part of the equation was being left behind, namely the client.

Sometimes, the tendency is to blame this lack of client-centricity in Fintech on the fact that the industry is being led by IT. Many companies start with a strong IT infrastructure but because their entire focus is tech, they neglect the customer services. What you might find yourself getting from such Fintech companies and banks that have incorporated thistheir model is a level of service similar to going to McDonald’s.

You will receive get the service and that McDonald’s cheeseburger is going to be fine. However, if you have an appetiteapetite for something something more complex or you have an issue or , if you need some kind of support, you could find yourself transferred betweento 20 different people. Or worse, 20 different bots. That’s where “Fintrusts” like the company I am part of, PayAlly, come in. We give you that restaurant-level customer service experience.

The essence of this approach is whether you can get your clients to trust your services, and show the value of what you do. That value has to be above what traditional banks do. How do you build that trust? First, you need to be knowledgeable about the service you provide. That is why it is important to build a base of expertise in your company that goes from IT to payment services and banking products. A proper merging of Fintech and more traditional banking.

And coming back to this idea of trust and expertise, Tto have a company that has the capacity to be truly client-centric, there must be sharing of knowledge. What does that mean? Simply this. When you ask for a waiter’s recommendation, theyhe or she should know a little about what the cook does and what is on the wine list. And Tthe same applies to my role. If you’re working with data protection, you have to understand what data is stored, how it’s being transferred, where it goes, how it’s deleted, can be deleted, what sort of stuff we can delete.

So, fine dining or fast food? It really depends on where you see the industry headed. For us, we are definitely in the camp of fine dining. That means, we need to be multi-faceted and client-centric. That means not focusing exclusively on the tech and that means dedicating resources to making time for our customers when they need us, and not when it’s convenient for us to communicate with them. It means no bots, robust compliance with regulations and a can-do attitude.