Artificial intelligence has existed in the popular consciousness for a long time.
Stephen Spielberg’s “A.I.”, a Pinocchio story about an artificially created boy, was released in 2001. And HAL 9000, the evil A.I. in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” quickly betrayed mankind all the way back in 1968, when the film debuted.
Despite that, artificial intelligence wasn’t being widely assimilated into the real world until the pandemic, which finally forced banks and financial institutions to embrace automation of their services, making them more customer-friendly in the process.
That process, now being seen across many industries in addition to finance, was the beginning of the fintech revolution now well underway, said Bardya Ziaian, the CEO of SITTU Group and an experienced Canadian entrepreneur in the fintech space.
Here are Bardya Ziaian’s suggestions for the top fintech trends of 2022.
Continued Expansion of Online Banking
While the last few years have already seen massive changes to the financial landscape, Bardya Ziaian believes it’s just the beginning.
There are several reasons for this. First, many more banks have been shutting down, a trend that wasn’t helped by more customers moving their banking online.
The services offered by digital banking put more power in the hands of customers, and provide the flexibility increasingly necessary in a globalized economy.
According to a 2021 Statista report, about 65 percent of US citizens now use online banks.
In half of the US is now using online banking services, it’s clear that fintech will continue to transform the financial services industry,” Ziaian said. “We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how banking works: from a centralized model to a customer-centric one driven by technology.”
New Services Through Data Aggregation
While gathering online data has been around for many years, the fintech industry will certainly invent ways to leverage that data on behalf of customers.
Companies focused on data aggregation will become more involved in facilitating data exchange between customers and online banks. Ziaian said that fintech companies will likely take advantage of this new transparency for many additional services.
“I would be on the lookout for new financial services that leverage the incredible amount of data now available, thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of digitizing financial services,” he said.
Rise of Voice-Enabled Payments
No one could have predicted how rapidly new forms of payment would be created by online banking. If the last few years are any indication, the ways we pay for things will continue to evolve as more options become available to customers.
Bardia Ziaian said that voice-activated payments are likely the next big thing in payment. With modern voice-recognition technology, it’s an easy, reliable, and super fast method of payment that doesn’t even require typing into your phone.
Blockchain Will Diversify
It’s impossible to talk about financial technology without mentioning blockchain. The technology that enabled cryptocurrency has the potential for so much more, Ziaian said.
The core value of blockchain technology is its distributed management, meaning that it can’t be fully controlled by any single entity, be it the bank, company, or government. The market growth for blockchain is undeniable, with Cision estimating an increase of $3 billion in 2020 to $39.6 billion by 2025.
“There’s no doubt that blockchain’s ability to offer a secure digital ledger will become a key aspect of online banking in 2022 and beyond,” Bardya Ziaian said.
The fintech industry is just getting started, he added.
