Fintech opens up opportunities for payments

Fintech, or financial technology companies, have revolutionized many areas of our financial lives in recent years, from banking to investment to budgeting. Hundreds of new companies have sprung to life, launching mainly apps that disrupt entire financial industries, gaining millions of customers by offering solutions that simplify and improve people’s financial lives.

This also applies to payments. It is not so long ago that in order to pay for goods, whether it is online or in a retail store, you had to have either a debit or credit card, and had to go through an often difficult and time consuming process to enter your card details or add to your pin etc.

In recent years, however, everyone will have seen many new logos appear on check-out websites and in checkout counters. It is no longer just the Visa and Mastercard logos that appear prominently, as a wide range of new ways of paying are now accepted. Below are some of the most important new ways to pay these days.

ApplePay:

It was only a matter of time before the technology giant found a way to enable users to pay with their smartphones, and ApplePay was launched in the US in 2014, followed by the UK in 2016, China in 2016, and now it has become one of the world’s largest payment systems. By 2020, Applepay had over 500 million users.

For Android phone users, GooglePay is available and works in a similar way to Applepay, and in the US, other Applepay competitors include Venmo and Zelle.

Clear:

Klarna was founded in 2005 in Sweden and entered the British market in 2017, and has taken the British payment landscape by storm. They follow the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) concept, which allows consumers to pay a small fraction (or even none) of the cost of an item when buying, and then pay in installments.

Zilch:

Zilch is a homemade BNPL competitor to Klarna, which has slowly and surely begun to gain market share and become the preferred payment provider for many UK consumers. For full Zilch reviews click here. Zilch allows the user to pay for purchases in 4 installments, with the first installment of 25% of the purchase price to be paid at the time of purchase, then the remaining 3 installments to be paid within the next 42 days.

Paypal:

Paypal can be described as the original fintech company, having launched back in 1998, long before the fintech revolution took hold. Today, Paypal is an almost expected alternative in any online store checkout, and can be found pretty much everywhere, and this success is demonstrated by the $ 25 billion in revenue that Paypal generated in 2021.

The above are just a small fraction of the new options available, and who knows how many more innovative and convenient payment solutions will be available over the next few years. What is certain is that both consumers and sellers will benefit from this expansion of choices.