4 exciting trends of this fintech frontier

Few events in the fintech calendar are as big as Money 20/20. More than 10,000 people went down for a 3 day event in Las Vegas, Nevada, to meet up and discern what the future of this brave new frontier would look like.

The technology we saw at this event could be commonplace in the near future.

The speed at which I see the Fintech space move with new ideas, new technologies, and new innovations truly astounds me. There is, frankly, no sector in finance and commerce that fintech has not reached.

For three days, I walked around the booths, spoke to founders, investors and the business elite, and attended talks from the likes of Vinod Khosla and Patrick Collision.

Here are the top 4 trends I saw at Money 20/20:

All hail remittances

Frankly, few technologies in fintech excite me the way remittance tech does. According to the International Labour organization, there are around 175 million migrants in the world today – people who left their home country for work opportunities.

These people need to send money home, and in the past this required a lot of legwork moving money through banks, telegraphs and intermediaries.

Thanks to startups like Xoom and Ayannah, and new innovations from old players like Western Union, technology is making it really easy for people to send money home over the internet.

In 2014, US$32 billion was sent by 1 million Xoom customers in the US alone to 32 countries around the world.

Within this sector, Asia reigns supreme. The World Bank estimates that Indians overseas will send US$72 billion home this year. China comes in second with US$64 billion in remittances, and the Philippines is third at US$30 billion.

In total, migrant workers around the world will send home some US$608 billion this year.

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