3 most important fintech innovations

With all the bad comes the good as well. The twenty-first century is a great time to live in. The process of innovation has never been faster before and day by day we are getting closer to bigger and groundbreaking breakthroughs in science. Financial Technology, or just simply FinTech, is one such sphere where things are becoming more turbulent augmenting our daily lives in a meaningful way.

It is a common false fact to believe that FinTech is something new and very modern. FinTech as a concept was first thought off when the technology of plastic cards and credit as well as debit cards. The credit cards were first created as far back as 70 years ago in the 1950s. Although the popularity of such technology was underwhelming, to say the least. It was due to the fact that there were no extra safety and security upgrades, and the card itself was just made of paper. People just did not trust anything that didn’t look like actual money. Although the technology became that much more popular in the 1990s when more people started utilizing international telephone calls or had to travel very long ways and wanted to have financial security while traveling. This is the time when a lot of new people started using them. With popularization in Hollywood as well with films like Hackers where a school kid manages to break the bank’s mainframe and makes a specific ATM machine in a different state cough up the money. Yes, with plastic cards came ATM machines.

Fintech companies aim to create newer ways to challenge traditional financial systems by creating IT solutions that upgrade, aid, or change the whole branch as a whole. These are things like blockchain, internet banking, Plastic cards, peer-to-peer lending, or other foreign exchange market trading tools like MT4 and MT5. The breakdown of different trading platforms is beyond the scope of this article, however, we will try to list 3 of the most innovative and quality of life-improving pieces of technology that came from FinTech companies.

Blockchain

If you are an adult you have heard of this piece of technology. It does not matter which sphere you work in if you have had any contact with the banking, investing, or cryptocurrencies you have heard of it. This is a new digital record-keeping technology that gave rise to such precedents like the Bitcoin (BTC) network. Blockchain is becoming extremely popular and lots of different countries are trying to adopt the system to make the already existent one augmented to a new level. The idea behind it is quite simple. It is a chain of digital blocks, which keep information about transactions. These blocks are basically bits of information transmitted through the network. The information can be anything starting from the date, time, and the amount of currency that was transacted. They also store information about the participants of the session. Each block is cryptographically encrypted and stores its identity information in hashed form. 

The blockchain consists of such blocks. Thereby it is some sort of a digital server room where all of the information connected with the transaction is stored together. Where it differs from the traditional accounting system is that while in the real world every transaction is kept in the public records and can be verified in systems like Securities Exchange Commission, local store, library, or whichever the institution which processed the transaction is. With blockchain, it is up to a network of computers to keep all of the required records. After the transaction is verified in the network the block gets saved alongside the digital signature of both buyer and seller with the information regarding the process itself like as we have already mentioned date, time, amount, and etc. 

Mobile Banking

Mobile banking is another one of the biggest FinTech inventions. This technology has given us the ability to check our balance on the go as well as make different types of payments possible literally anywhere. For as long as one has a smartphone or just a computer to visit the mobile banking website, the possibilities become that much more prevalent. Digital banking has revolutionized conventional banking and simplified the process of financial transactions. 

Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, mobile banking cases have gone up significantly due to the simple fact that a lot of people are spending much more time at home. This has boosted the food delivery industry as a whole which requires some kind of mobile banking. This is also due to the fact that people are disinclined to start searching for an ATM machine to keep cash on their hands. Although, it is important to have some kind of real money savings around the house in case of an emergency. 

MetaTrader 4

MetaTrader 4, or MT4 in short, is one of the world’s most popular online trading platforms where one is given the ability to automate lots of different tasks that are related to trading. MT4 was basically the first actually consumer-friendly platform which gave rise to a lot of foreign exchange market, or forex (FX), traders that work from home. 

MetaTrader 4 was first developed by MetaQuotes in 2005. The most common usage is forex trading, however, the platform also supports a range of other possibilities like trading on indices, cryptocurrencies, and commodities via CFDs. It is very customizable and gives the ability to create algorithmic trading which opens or closes the deal at any given preprogrammed time.