On April 4th, KoreFusion’s Founding Partner, Yogesh Oka, participated in the Association for Corporate Growth’s (ACG) FinTech Panel in San Francisco. The theme of the panel was on the future of fintech and Yogesh presented the firm’s perspectives on the emergence of ‘Fintech 3.0’.
‘Fintech 1.0’ was characterized by rapid identification and exploitation of opportunities to leverage technology to disintermediate traditional financial services. However, this stage was focused primarily on proof-of-concepts and undisciplined customer acquisition.
‘Fintech 2.0’ saw a rapid increase in intra-vertical consolidation within the fintech industry, a shift towards partnerships and co-opetition, and greater discipline around business model development and customer acquisition models.
Strategic and technological partnerships will remain important, but as fintech continues to become increasingly global, with emerging market players like Alibaba and Tencent (in Asia) and Mercado Libre and PayU (in Latin America) increasingly focused on their cross-border payment capabilities, inter-vertical consolidation between fintech verticals will become more common, and on a global scale. This will likely lead to numerous “black swan” and “blockbuster” M&A scenarios, more pressure on mid-sized players who will be most acutely impacted by rapidly evolving industry trends, and the entry of less speculative (“smart”) money entering the industry.
In these contexts, acquisition rationale will be driven less by immediate financial impact and more by strategic positioning. For fintech players, ‘Fintech 3.0’ will mean new types of creative exit opportunities and a new set of potential partners. This, in turn, opens a range of options for them as they plan their growth and exit strategies.
You can download KoreFusion's panel presentation here.
If you like to discuss what Fintech 3.0 means for you, please reach out at information@korefusion.com.
