22 December 2019

Fintech’s next decade will look radically different


The birth and growth of financial technology developed mostly over the last ten years.

So as we look ahead, what does the next decade have in store? I believe we’re starting to see early signs: in the next ten years, fintech will become portable and ubiquitous as it moves to the background and centralizes into one place where our money is managed for us.

When I started working in fintech in 2012, I had trouble tracking competitive search terms because no one knew what our sector was called. The best-known companies in the space were Paypal and Mint.

fintech search volume

Google search volume for “fintech,” 2000 – present.

Fintech has since become a household name, a shift that came with with prodigious growth in investment: from $2 billion in 2010 to over $50 billion in venture capital in 2018 (and on-pace for $30 billion+ this year).

Predictions were made along the way with mixed results — banks will go out of business, banks will catch back up. Big tech will get into consumer finance. Narrow service providers will unbundle all of consumer finance. Banks and big fintechs will gobble up startups and consolidate the sector. Startups will each become their own banks. The fintech ‘bubble’ will burst.

https://ift.tt/35PCNan

Here’s what did happen: fintechs were (and still are) heavily verticalized, recreating the offline branches of financial services by bringing them online and introducing efficiencies. The next decade will look very different. Early signs are beginning to emerge from overlooked areas which suggest that financial services in the next decade will:

  1. Be portable and interoperable: Like mobile phones, customers will be able to easily transition between ‘carriers’.
  2. Become more ubiquitous and accessible: Basic financial products will become a commodity and bring unbanked participants ‘online’.
  3. Move to the background: The users of financial tools won’t have to develop 1:1 relationships with the providers of those tools.
  4. Centralize into a few places and steer on ‘autopilot’.

Prediction 1: The open data layer

Thesis: Data will be openly portable and will no longer be a competitive moat for fintechs.

Personal data has never had a moment in the spotlight quite like 2019. The Cambridge Analytica scandal and the data breach that compromised 145 million Equifax accounts sparked today’s public consciousness around the importance of data security. Last month, the House of Representatives’ Fintech Task Force met to evaluate financial data standards and the Senate introduced the Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act.

A tired cliché in tech today is that “data is the new oil.” Other things being equal, one would expect banks to exploit their data-rich advantage to build the best fintech. But while it’s necessary, data alone is not a sufficient competitive moat: great tech companies must interpret, understand and build customer-centric products that leverage their data.

Why will this change in the next decade? Because the walls around siloed customer data in financial services are coming down. This is opening the playing field for upstart fintech innovators to compete with billion-dollar banks, and it’s happening today.

Much of this is thanks to a relatively obscure piece of legislation in Europe, PSD2. Think of it as GDPR for payment data. The UK became the first to implement PSD2 policy under its Open Banking regime in 2018. The policy requires all large banks to make consumer data available to any fintech which the consumer permissions. So if I keep my savings with Bank A but want to leverage them to underwrite a mortgage with Fintech B, as a consumer I can now leverage my own data to access more products.

Consortia like FDATA are radically changing attitudes towards open banking and gaining global support. In the U.S., five federal financial regulators recently came together with a rare joint statement on the benefits of alternative data, for the most part only accessible through open banking technology.

The data layer, when it becomes open and ubiquitous, will erode the competitive advantage of data-rich financial institutions. This will democratize the bottom of the fintech stack and open the competition to whoever can build the best products on top of that openly accessible data… but building the best products is still no trivial feat, which is why Prediction 2 is so important:

Prediction 2: The open protocol layer

Thesis: Basic financial services will become simple open-source protocols, lowering the barrier for any company to offer financial products to its customers.

Picture any investment, wealth management, trading, merchant banking, or lending system. Just to get to market, these systems have to rigorously test their core functionality to avoid legal and regulatory risk. Then, they have to eliminate edge cases, build a compliance infrastructure, contract with third-party vendors to provide much of the underlying functionality (think: Fintech Toolkit) and make these systems all work together.

The end result is that every financial services provider builds similar systems, replicated over and over and siloed by company. Or even worse, they build on legacy core banking providers, with monolith systems in outdated languages (hello, COBOL). These services don’t interoperate, and each bank and fintech is forced to become its own expert at building financial protocols ancillary to its core service.

But three trends point to how that is changing today:

First, the infrastructure and service layer to build is being disaggregates, thanks to platforms like Stripe, Marqeta, Apex, and Plaid. These ‘finance as a service’ providers make it easy to build out basic financial functionality. Infrastructure is currently a hot investment category and will be as long as more companies get into financial services — and as long as infra market leaders can maintain price control and avoid commoditization.

Second, industry groups like FINOS are spearheading the push for open-source financial solutions. Consider a Github repository for all the basic functionality that underlies fintech tools. Developers could continuously improve the underlying code. Software could become standardized across the industry. Solutions offered by different service providers could become more inter-operable if they shared their underlying infrastructure.

And third, banks and investment managers, realizing the value in their own technology, are today starting to license that technology out. Examples are BlackRock’s Aladdin risk-management system or Goldman’s Alloy data modeling program. By giving away or selling these programs to clients, banks open up another revenue stream, make it easy for the financial services industry to work together (think of it as standardizing the language they all use), and open up a customer base that will provide helpful feedback, catch bugs, and request new useful product features.

As Andreessen Horowitz partner Angela Strange notes, “what that means is, there are several different infrastructure companies that will partner with banks and package up the licensing process and some regulatory work, and all the different payment-type networks that you need. So if you want to start a financial company, instead of spending two years and millions of dollars in forming tons of partnerships, you can get all of that as a service and get going.”

Fintech is developing in much the same way computers did: at first software and hardware came bundled, then hardware became below differentiated operating systems with ecosystem lock-in, then the internet broke open software with software-as-a-service. In that way, fintech in the next ten years will resemble the internet of the last twenty.

placeholder vc infographic

Infographic courtesy Placeholder VC

Prediction 3: Embedded fintech

Thesis: Fintech will become part of the basic functionality of non-finance products.

The concept of embedded fintech is that financial services, rather than being offered as a standalone product, will become part of the native user interface of other products, becoming embedded.

This prediction has gained supporters over the last few months, and it’s easy to see why. Bank partnerships and infrastructure software providers have inspired companies whose core competencies are not consumer finance to say “why not?” and dip their toes in fintech’s waters.

Apple debuted the Apple Card. Amazon offers its Amazon Pay and Amazon Cash products. Facebook unveiled its Libra project and, shortly afterward, launched Facebook Pay. As companies from Shopify to Target look to own their payment and purchase finance stacks, fintech will begin eating the world.

If these signals are indicative, financial services in the next decade will be a feature of the platforms with which consumers already have a direct relationship, rather than a product for which consumers need to develop a relationship with a new provider to gain access.

Matt Harris of Bain Capital Ventures summarizes in a recent set of essays (one, two) what it means for fintech to become embedded. His argument is that financial services will be the next layer of the ‘stack’ to build on top of internet, cloud, and mobile. We now have powerful tools that are constantly connected and immediately available to us through this stack, and embedded services like payments, transactions, and credit will allow us to unlock more value in them without managing our finances separately.

Fintech futurist Brett King puts it even more succinctly: technology companies and large consumer brands will become gatekeepers for financial products, which themselves will move to the background of the user experiences. Many of these companies have valuable data from providing sticky, high-affinity consumer products in other domains. That data can give them a proprietary advantage in cost-cutting or underwriting (eg: payment plans for new iPhones). The combination of first-order services (eg: making iPhones) with second-order embedded finance (eg: microloans) means that they can run either one as a loss-leader to subsidize the other, such as lowering the price of iPhones while increasing Apple’s take on transactions in the app store.

This is exciting for the consumers of fintech, who will no longer have to search for new ways to pay, invest, save, and spend. It will be a shift for any direct-to-consumer brands, who will be forced to compete on non-brand dimensions and could lose their customer relationships to aggregators.

Even so, legacy fintechs stand to gain from leveraging the audience of big tech companies to expand their reach and building off the contextual data of big tech platforms. Think of Uber rides hailed from within Google Maps: Uber made a calculated choice to list its supply on an aggregator in order to reach more customers right when they’re looking for directions.

Prediction 4: Bringing it all together

Thesis: Consumers will access financial services from one central hub.

In-line with the migration from front-end consumer brand to back-end financial plumbing, most financial services will centralize into hubs to be viewed all in one place.

For a consumer, the hub could be a smartphone. For a small business, within Quickbooks or Gmail or the cash register.

As companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon split their operating systems across platforms (think: Alexa + Amazon Prime + Amazon Credit Card), benefits will accrue to users who are fully committed to one ecosystem so that they can manage their finances through any platform — but these providers will make their platforms interoperable as well so that Alexa (e.g.) can still win over Android users.

As a fintech nerd, I love playing around with different financial products. But most people are not fintech nerds and prefer to interact with as few services as possible. Having to interface with multiple fintechs separately is ultimately value subtractive, not additive. And good products are designed around customer-centric intuition. In her piece, Google Maps for Money, Strange calls this ‘autonomous finance:’ your financial service products should know your own financial position better than you do so that they can make the best choices with your money and execute them in the background so you don’t have to.

And so now we see the rebundling of services. But are these the natural endpoints for fintech? As consumers become more accustomed to financial services as a natural feature of other products, they will probably interact more and more with services in the hubs from which they manage their lives. Tech companies have the natural advantage in designing the product UIs we love — do you enjoy spending more time on your bank’s website or your Instagram feed? Today, these hubs are smartphones and laptops. In the future, could they be others, like emails, cars, phones or search engines?

As the development of fintech mirrors the evolution of computers and the internet, becoming interoperable and embedded in everyday services, it will radically reshape where we manage our finances and how little we think about them anymore. One thing is certain: by the time I’m writing this article in 2029, fintech will look very little like it did today.

So which financial technology companies will be the ones to watch over the next decade? Building off these trends, we’ve picked five that will thrive in this changing environment.


Read Full Article

The Minecraft Commands Cheat Sheet


Minecraft blocks

Whether you’re trying to manage a server or you just want to give yourself a bunch of diamonds, Minecraft commands are a useful tool. You can type them into your chat, or load them into a command block for automated use.

There are plenty of commands to try. You can use the gamemode command to change the game mode to Creative, which lets you fly around anywhere. The give command allows you to give yourself any item you like. There’s a teleport command in case you die a long way away from your spawn point. You can even change your spawn point anytime, without the need for a bed!

It’s important to note that not all Minecraft commands are compatible with every platform. PC users can use “Java Edition” commands, while players on consoles or mobiles will need “Bedrock Edition” commands. Some commands work the same way on both versions, and some may have different syntaxes. The cheat sheet PDF available for download below highlights these differences and also contains example commands.

Without further ado, here’s the cheat sheet for all your Minecraft command needs.

FREE DOWNLOAD: This cheat sheet is available as a downloadable PDF from our distribution partner, TradePub. You will have to complete a short form to access it for the first time only. Download The Minecraft Commands Cheat Sheet.

The Minecraft Commands Cheat Sheet

Keep in mind that Minecraft cheats are not enabled by default. The setting for enabling cheats varies depending on the Minecraft version you’re using.

Command Name Command Syntax
Server Management
Ban Player /ban [target] [reason]
Ban IP Address /ban-ip [target/IP address] [reason]
View Banned Users /banlist players
/banlist IPs
Change Default Gamemode /defaultgamemode (survival/creative/adventure/spectator)
Remove Operator Privileges /deop [target]
Force a Chunk to Load Constantly /forceload (add/remove) (chunk coords)
/forceload remove all
/forceload query (chunk coords)
Set the Current Gamemode /gamemode (survival/creative/adventure/spectator) [target]
Set a Gamerule /gamerule [RuleName] (RuleValues)
List Players on Server /list
/list uuids
Kick Player /kick [target] [reason]
Give Operator Status /op [player]
Unban Player /pardon [player]
Unban IP Address /pardon-ip [address]
Allow LAN Users to Join a Singleplayer World /publish [port]
Save a Backup of a World /save hold
/save query
/save resume
Save a Server /save-all (flush)
Disable Automatic Server Saves /save-off
Enable Automatic Server Saves /save-on
Change Idle Kick Time /setidletimeout [minutes]
Set Maximum Player Count /setmaxplayers [amount]
Set Default Spawn Point /setworldspawn
/setworldspawn (x, y, z)
Make Spectator Follow Entity /spectate [target] [player]
Spread Players Across World /spreadplayers (center coords) [distance of spread] [maximum range] [team spread: true/false] [targets]
Shut Down Server /stop
Count an Entity /testfor [target]
Transfer to Another Server /transferserver [ip address] [port]
Modify the Server Whitelist /whitelist (add/remove) [player]
/whitelist (on/off)
/whitelist list
/whitelist reload
Enable/Disable Mob Events /mobevent [event] (true/false)
Connect to a WebSocket Server /wsserver OR /connect [ip]
Player Modification and Cheats
Clear Items from Inventory /clear [target]
/clear [target] [item]
/clear [target] [item] [amount]
Add or Remove Advancements /advancement (grant/remove) [target] everything
Grant or Remove a Status Effect For Java: /effect give [entity] [effect] (duration) (effect level) (hide particles: true/false)
For Bedrock: /effect [entity] [effect] (duration) (effect level) (hide particles: true/false)
For Java: /effect clear [entity] [effect]
For Bedrock: /effect [entity] clear
Enchant Current Weapon /enchant [target] [enchantment ID] [level]
Add or Remove Experience Points (/experience OR /xp) add [target] [amount] (points/levels)
(/experience OR /xp) set [target] [amount] (points/levels)
/experience query [target] (points/levels)
Give an Item to Someone /give [target] [item] [amount]
Kill Entity /kill
/kill [target]
Locate Structure /locate [structure]
Add or Remove Recipes /recipe (give/take) [player] [recipe name]
Set Player's Spawn Point /spawnpoint
/spawnpoint (x, y, z)
/spawnpoint [optional target] (x, y, z)
Summon an Entity /summon [entity]
/summon [entity] (x, y, z)
Teleport an Entity /teleport OR /tp (coords)
/tp [target] (coords)
/tp [target] (coords) (rotation)
/tp [target] (coords) facing (location)
/tp [target] (coords) facing [entity]
World Editing and Management
Clone a Region of Blocks /clone (beginning coord of region) (end coord of region) (destination coords)
Replace Items in Blocks /replaceitem block (block coords) [slot] [item] (amount)
Change a Block to a Different Block /setblock (x, y, z) [block]
Edit Blocks in a Region /fill (beginning region coord) (end region coord) [block type] (destroy/hollow/keep/outline/replace)
Test if a Block is Present /testforblock (x, y, z) [block name]
Test if Blocks in Two Regions Are Identical /testforblocks (beginning coord of region) (end coord of region) (comparison coords)
Add or Remove a Ticking Area /tickingarea add (beginning coord of region) (end coord of region) [name]
/tickingarea add circle (center coord) (radius) [name]
/tickingarea remove (name/all)
Adjust or See the World Time /time (add/set) [amount]
/time query (daytime/gametime/day)
Display or Edit a Title Screen /title [player] (title/subtitle/actionbar) [title]
/title [player] times [fadein time] [stay time] [fadeout time]
/title [player] clear
/title [player] reset
Turn Rain On or Off /toggledownfall
Change the Weather /weather (clear/rain/thunder) [duration]
Display the World Seed /seed
Modify the World Border /worldborder add [distance] [time]
/worldborder center (coords)
/worldborder damage (amount/buffer) [variables]
/worldborder get
/worldborder set [distance] [time]
/worldborder warning (distance/time) [variables]
Toggle World Builder Status /worldbuilder OR /wb
Communication
Display Custom Action in Chat /me [action]
Send a Private Message (/msg OR /tell OR /w) [player] [message]
Send a Message to the Server /say [message]
Send a Message to Your Team (/teammsg OR /tm) [message]
Send a JSON Message to All Players /tellraw [player] (message)
Team and Scoreboard Management
Modify Player Teams /team add [team name] [display name]
/team empty [team name]
/team join [team name] [players]
/team leave [players]
/team list [team name]
/team modify [team name] [attribute] [value]
/team remove [team name]
Modify the Scoreboard /scoreboard objectives (add/list/modify/remove/setdisplay) [variables]
/scoreboard players (add/enable/get/list/operation/remove/reset/set) [variables]
Add, Remove, or View Scoreboard Tags /tag [target] list
/tag [target] (add/remove) [tag]
Trigger a Scoreboard Objective /trigger (objective name) [add/set(number)]
Data Management
Customize Boss Health Bars /bossbar (add/get/list/remove/set) [bossbar id] [additional parameters]
Modify How Data Packs are Loaded and Unloaded /datapack disable [data pack name]
/datapack enable [data pack name] (first/last)
/datapack enable [data pack name] (before/after) [data pack]
/datapack list (available/enabled)
Enable or Disable Debugging /debug (start/stop/report)
Get Help for a Command /help [page] [command]
Play a Sound /playsound [sound] [category] [player] [source coord] [volume] [pitch] [min volume]
Stop a Sound Playing /stopsound [target]
Reload Data Packs /reload
Schedule a Function to Run /schedule function [function path] [time(d/s/t)]
Run a Function /function [function path]
Useful Target Modifiers
Target the Nearest Player @p
Target a Random Player @r
Target All Players @a
Target All Entities @e
Target a Team [team=TeamName]
Target an Entity Type [type=EntityTypeName]
Target Players With Specific EXP Levels [level=LevelNumber]
[level=FromLevel..ToLevel]
[level=AboveLevel..]
[level=..BelowLevel]
Target Players in a Specific Gamemode [gamemode=GamemodeName]
Targets Entities With a Specific Name [name=TargetName]
Reverse a Target Modifier [modifier=!target]

Minecraft With a Twist

Minecraft has many commands under its hood, but they’re not too complex. And whether you’re mass-editing a world or you want to fly around in Creative mode, there’s a command to help you.

Speaking of Minecraft commands, they include a special subset of commands called the Minecraft command block commands. You can use them to grant specific admin-level powers to players who don’t have admin privileges. And you’ll learn all about the command block commands in our Minecraft command blocks guide.

Read the full article: The Minecraft Commands Cheat Sheet


Read Full Article