Digital Banking 101

Getting the Lingo Right

What is Digital Banking?

Easy! It’s banking on the internet, right? Not entirely. Digital Banking is the result of a ‘digitalization’ of a bank’s products, operations, and processes to reduce risk, improve operational efficiency and provide innovative products to its customers.

What is Fintech

We define fintech technology as any technology that helps companies in financial services to operate or deliver their products and services, or that helps companies or individuals to manage their financial affairs. (toptal.com, state of the fintech industry)

Cracking the code: Digitalization vs Digitization

Digitalization is often confused with ‘digitization’, though very connected, the two words hold two very different meanings. Digitization is the movement from legacy to digital, whereas digitalization is the use of digital technologies and digitized data to impact how work gets done, transform how customers and companies engage and interact, and create new (digital) revenue streams.

The USP of a digital banking platform is not just to provide convenience but to harness the opportunities that technology provides us to make significant improvements to the tools we use in our day to day lives.

The Current Disconnect

There are so many FinTech’s cropping up in this space, its become difficult to define what is a fintech and where does digital banking fit in to the equation? So, let’s break it down and squash some myths! We can reference the fintech eco-system by business insider, but we both know that is an overwhelming document to look at.

So what do you really need to know?

Fintech has literally exploded in growth over the last few years. It is becoming clear which FinTech's are winning and which are falling behind. Technology trends will also continue to develop and mature.

What trends can we expect from 2020? (don’t worry we’re not here to give more bad news)

Stay tuned as we deep dive into the history of Fintech and a focus on MENA and the GCC.