Most European banks see fintech partnerships essential to financial services delivery future - ACI report

These partnerships are taking a wide range of forms, from selective collaborations and in-house acceleration programmes to acquisitions, joint ventures and, for a growing number of banks, a blended approach that includes a combination of some or all of the elements above, according to the ACI Fintech Disruptors Report 2017, conducted by MagnaCarta on behalf of ACI Worldwide.

Collaborating comes with a range of benefits for all of these organisations: fintechs look to banks for help with financing or to get access to a broad customer base, whereas traditional FIs are increasingly looking to work with fintechs in order to develop new applications and generate new revenue streams.

Moreover, over half of respondents (56%) said payments was the biggest area of investment for next year with the global push for real-time payments quoted as a major theme, followed by eCommerce (36%), consumer banking (35%) and security and fraud management (28%).

In terms of biggest opportunities, banks feel the biggest opportunities for collaboration with fintechs are in the areas of developing APIs (46%), mobile applications (43%) and Data Analytics (38%). When it comes to global hubs, 79% of all respondents believe North America will remain the global centre of fintech innovation over the next five years, followed by the UK (67%), Europe (43%) and China (43%).

Africa is seen as the biggest opportunity for growth: The continent, with a large unbanked population, estimated to be as high as 90% in some countries such as Nigeria, is widely viewed as the region with the greatest potential for fintech applications.

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