Fintech Trends in 2022

The past few years have seen major developments in the fintech world. With the COVID-19 pandemic drastically altering how industry operates, we’ve witnessed a huge acceleration in digital innovation.

With such an exciting current landscape and new technologies on the horizon, let’s explore some of the biggest trends in fintech in 2022.

Current fintech trends

Below we’ll delve into the top fintech technology trends and fintech banking trends of 2022.

NFTs entering the mainstream

Non fungible tokens, or NFTs, are not new to 2022, but they are set to increase and become ever more wide-reaching. Indeed, with the introduction of mainstream immersive digital ecosystems such as Mark Zuckerberg’s “metaverse”, the demand for NFTs is expected to surge.

While, until now, NFTs have remained a fairly elusive trend — perhaps even niche — it is expected to be utilised more by the sports, media and entertainment industries as a means of exploiting their content. And, as it enters the mainstream, we can expect more regulation around NFT activity and greater focus on issues surrounding intellectual property.

Open Banking

Traditional high street banking is increasingly being side-lined by innovative, digital banking trends. At the forefront of this transformation is Open Banking, a model which allows third-party access to banking data via APIs. Through these APIs, authorised parties can see into and verify a consumer’s bank information, and consumers can trigger the movement of money from one bank account to another.

This allows financial institutions to provide more flexible and modern services to their customers — a huge asset during the pandemic when traditional banks were closed. Open Banking also enables customers to aggregate their accounts in one place, leverage finance tools, manage subscriptions, and make payments in novel ways.

GoCardless is a leading figure in Open Banking, offering key solutions powered by Open Banking: Verified Mandates and Instant Bank Pay. The former verifies account ownership instantaneously, while the latter allows customers to make instant payments.

Open finance

Current Open Banking solutions are expected to spearhead the evolution into open finance. Within this trend, we will likely see solutions for enhanced data sharing and third-party access to savings accounts, pensions and investments.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a feedback statement pointing to developing trends in open finance in the UK. The report predicts new and innovative ways for customers to manage their finances, through the use of consensual data sharing with third parties. Improved Account Information Services which offer advisory solutions, such as liquidity management and financial projections, may also emerge as a trend. Overall, we can expect huge improvements in mobile tools for personal and business financial management.

More banks will offer embedded solutions

Embedded finance has emerged as a key trend in recent years, and is now being adopted by more and more banks looking for ways to develop as service providers to non-bank and non-financial institutions. In other words, banks are  set to transform as institutions, remodelling as bodies offering financial services as a portion of a wider range of services. The motivation for this, of course, is to stay current and alive in a landscape that’s pointing more and more towards Open Banking as a preferred baking solution.  

More regulation around cryptocurrencies

2022 is set to be the year of crypto regulation. One of the ways this will likely be achieved is through “stablecoins”: a digital currency which is pegged to a stable asset such as gold or reserve currencies. With a pegged value, they are considered less turbulent and a more reliable asset for crypto users.

In January of 2022, the UK government also announced that companies will no longer be allowed to promote crypto assets unless they are registered with the financial regulator.

We can help

GoCardless is a global payments solution that helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of financial admin your team needs to deal with. Find out how GoCardless can help you with one-off or recurring payments.