Fady Abdel-Nour, Global Head of Investments and M&A at PayU

2020 will go down in history as a pivotal time for the world of digital payments. In 2021, what may have until recently felt new, exciting and progressive will fast become the norm. And so it should.

Financial institutions, central banks, fintechs and payments providers have all had no option but to move operations online, quickly. Finding digital transformation is no longer a topic of discussion; digital is the new business operating model. Across the market we’re seeing how varying digital strategies are determining who’s thriving and who’s merely surviving. Now that the market has established a baseline for digital platforms, I believe we’ll see significant strides made in payments innovation.

As such, digital financial services are now mainstream – fact. Over the past year we saw them surge to fruition, driven by consumer demand. This presented a challenge to those both in the process of digital transformation, and those already transformed. It tested organisations on their abilities to scale at pace and the reliability of their technology. At PayU, we’ve always been a digital-first organisation but we still had to test our ability to serve the rise in demand for digital payments. I’m proud to say we met the challenge. For example, some of the e-shops we serve saw 500-1000% revenue growth in April and May compared to the same periods less than 12 months prior.

Robust technological infrastructure will undoubtedly become the standard moving forward. PayU recognises this, and as both a global fintech investor and a payments operator, our aim is to set the pace in high-growth markets, not just keep it. I’m certain this year we’ll see financial services players look to the next stage of innovation and growth. On top of this, one lesson I think we’ve learnt collectively is that change can happen much faster than previously envisaged. In learning this, the growth potential in high-growth markets becomes far more compelling to fintechs entering the market. As a result, in 2021 I expect we’ll see more Mergers & Acquisitions in unsaturated regions.

Something else I expect we’ll see within our markets this year is the roll out of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Digital currency more broadly will start to see real use cases emerge, and this is what I’m most excited about. The discussion around crypto has been going on for too long, with not enough appreciation for the immense potential it has for financial inclusion and global connectivity. The pace of innovation within this market has changed now though. Initiatives like Diem, for example, are showing how blockchain could democratise and decentralise money, taking us a considerable step closer to truly accessible financial services for all.

I’ve always been a strong advocate for the financial services industry working closely with regulators and governments to drive innovation and inclusion. Throughout 2020 these organisations proved that they are also just as capable of adapting quickly. As such, I believe 2020 has established a significantly different pace for innovation, and over the next decade we will see this continue apace.

David Holden-White, co-founder and managing director, techspert.io

The world is awash with information. Analyst house IDC estimated that more than 59 zettabytes of data would be created, captured, copied and consumed in 2020, and that the amount of data created over the next three years will be more than what was created in the past 30. The boom in consumer technology and the rapid improvement in mobile connectivity has meant that the 48% of the globe that owns a smartphone has near instant access to all the digitised, publicly available information in the world in their pocket.

A world overloaded by information

It’s no surprise that people talk of information overload, or how much it impacts productivity. It’s not new either. A 2012 study from McKinsey & Co highlighted that nearly a fifth of professionals’ time was spent searching for and gathering information, half of the time they spent undertaking role-specific tasks. This is only likely to have increased as we’ve become more dependent on digital tools and services.

On top of that is the realisation that, thanks to social media, we’re living in a time when anyone can be an influencer or thought leader if they shout loud enough. It doesn’t matter whether you’re pushing trainers or cloud computing, whether your audience is a broad spectrum of consumers or a niche group of B2B buyers; the tools and resources are pretty much freely available to build a profile and push your message out there.

David Holden-White

The result is that it’s becoming increasingly hard to find the value amongst vast and accelerating volumes of online data and noise, and to use that data to make accurate, effective decisions.

This is something we need to be able to do. We’re all expected to work faster, to make better decisions more quickly. The pandemic showed that certain changes don’t need five committees, two working groups and a proof of concept to take place before decisions can be rubber stamped. At the same time, no matter what industry you work in, there will be competitors who are more agile, more flexible, and seem to be much better at making decisions and capitalising on opportunities.

Yet those decisions still need to be backed by evidence, by irrefutable knowledge. What’s more, there’s only so much data can give us. We need the insights stored in the minds of true experts, with lived experiences of the particular problems, markets and technologies in question. In accessing this, we can develop a decision-making edge in businesses that competitors don’t have, that can be used to drive entrance into new markets, or for winning investment decisions.

Limiting risk in investment decisions

As we all know, investments are inherently risk-related, so, anyone making such a decision will do all they can to minimise their risk exposure, especially in volatile post-covid markets.

To do that requires being able to identify, consume and process information quickly. Investment opportunities, particularly in industries with significant growth capacity, come around quickly and get snapped up fast.

Those decisions will incorporate analysing and drawing insights from raw data, using publicly available and analyst-produced information. But there is also an opportunity to draw on human insights, from leading experts in relevant fields, to get a sense of the story that 0s and 1s can’t properly tell yet. Tapping into the right minds  is essential to informing investment decision-making in 2021.

In an ever-growing haystack of information, the challenge is finding them quickly. Plus, once they are found, there’s a tendency to keep using them, or to use them as a gateway to others in their network. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it leaves investors exposed to a lack of diversity in thought that makes getting to an unbiased view of the world impossible. At the same time, casting their net wide and finding lots of experts is resource and time-intensive, at a point when time is one commodity in short supply.

So, what’s the solution? Ironically, given that the challenge is bringing the right human insight into the process, the answer could lie in technology, specifically artificial intelligence (AI). AI-powered platforms can take a request for expertise and run searches through all available published and credible material to recommend the most appropriate experts for the project in question.

It’s true that there are already services that recommend experts, but they are heavily manual and therefore slow and imprecise. It’s also true, there are also both negative and positive connotations being attached to AI. No technology is without its flaws, and if investors were relying on the AI platform itself to provide expertise then there would be cause for concern. Services that provide access to the experts themselves, however, are providing a fast way through the noise and data – it’s a car to the destination, not the destination itself. Once investors and experts are connected, the former has access to the relevant insight the latter holds in their heads. What AI has done is rapidly scan through millions of people of talent to highlight the relevant knowledge holders with pin-point accuracy.

Using technology to highlight the best human knowledge

Using an AI technology platform to find the most relevant human is a way of taking a resource-consuming process and finding what’s needed in a thousandth of the time. In that way, investors can get fast access to the human insight they need to make the best decisions,  allowing them to capitalise on opportunities and not miss the next big growth opportunity.