Why the world needs to know more about local fintech
Every day on our podcasts, our social forums, videos, and events, we have the privilege of talking to the founders, the builders, the passionate people shaping the future of financial services.
The ones that either saw or experienced a problem and decided to fix it. The ones taking risks, putting in the blood, sweat and tears to not only build teams, but shape products that improve people’s relationships with money, while also navigating funding, regulations, market conditions, etc., etc.
We have the privilege of hearing about their challenges, their ideas, their passions, first-hand. And it truly is a privilege, because every hour in the day is precious for them, and by spending a bit of their day with us, they allow us the opportunity to share their stories with our fantastic fintech community worldwide.
So that we can all learn. And build. And shape the future of financial services. Together.
Through our Fintech Insider podcast, we already reach 100,000s of people every week in over 180 countries. And we all nerd out together about everything from payments to BaaS to user experience to open finance. Our families and friends don’t understand why we get so excited about the clever widget our bank added to their mobile app, or the new feature our investment app launched. But our fintech friends get it. And that passion keeps us fuelled.
Thinking back on the thousands of hours of podcast content we’ve created, the stories that stick out for me are the ones that start with a true purpose. And true purpose can come from a problem shared by people around the world, but it often starts locally. Stories of people helping farmers in Scandinavia with regenerative agriculture through fintech, to helping small businesses in South Africa scale through better payment integrations, to neobanks helping Black America build generational wealth, are the ones that stick with me.
That’s why we started Fintech Insider Focus
To tell the local stories, the regional stories.
Because fintech is both global and local at the same time. Where some challenges, opportunities and solutions are universal, others are specific to the people, infrastructure and geopolitics of a particular region.
Because fintech is both global and local at the same time.
Nigeria faces a very different regulatory environment to the UK, and the people in South East Asia have access to very different technology - well, to everyone else.
The UK and US continue to lead on some fronts, but more and more, we’re seeing fintech success stories springing up all over the map. Brazilian darling Nubank was the most valued neobank of 2021, Asian Super Apps are ‘transforming technology’ and we even saw an African fintech make M&A moves into Europe. These stories are changing the makeup of the industry as we know it.
That’s our Focus
So those are the stories we’ll dive into on Fintech Insider Focus. And we couldn’t have asked for a better partner than Visa, to help us reach builders around the world, and ask them to share their stories.
As a global fintech community, there is no shortage of global issues we need to better understand, and we’ll continue to unpack these on Fintech Insider News and Fintech Insider Insights.
But we’re super excited to add a third string to our bow, and tell the local stories with Visa on Fintech Insider Focus.
And you can check it out here, or on YouTube.
Here’s to the next 700 episodes!