Fintech is the Flavour of 2017, These Companies are Proof! These successful companies are moving beyond their existing sector and are foraying into financial technology
By Sanchita Dash •
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The world is your oyster; this seems to be Fintech's mantra these days. From a small retail outlet to big corporations trading in billions, nothing seems to escape the Fintech mania. From investors to already established entrepreneurs, everyone's looking at expanding into financial technology because the bucks are there.
Entrepreneur India takes a look at how successful sectors and the companies that are now dabbling into fintech to make sure that they aren't losing out in the race.
Flying into Fintech
While news of its crashing rates are often making headlines, Air Asia Group has turned the flight around this time. The airlines company is planning to launch a fintech platform which will help smoothen the inflight purchases and transactions. Reports said that the same programme will be available for Air Asia's 60 million annual customers. The fintech programme which will offer banking and financial services will be called "The Big".
This one's for the cart
A sector that is almost everywhere now has to be the e-commerce marketplaces. With Amazon buying Whole Foods to now news of it venturing into Fintech. Already, the company had announced that as a lending platform, it has given out $1 billion in small loans. In its process of making shopping a much easier, the company has already brought about Amazon Go, a store where there are no checkout salespeople or even Amazon Pay, allowing people to checkout faster on its website. It's Indian competitior, Flipkart is also touted to be investing into Fintech.
IT's everywhere
The whole revolution into technology was brought about by the Tech giants, so no doubt that it wouldn't stay behind in the fintech revolution too. And with the GST rolling out soon, Microsoft has partnered with Ernst and Young to bring about DigiGST. The technology tool has brought about both the sides - Application Service Provider and GST Suvidha Provider onto one platform. Claiming to be an end-to-end compliance support software, it is hosted on Microsoft's Azure.
Hello Finance!
Messaging platforms have been one of the most used apps across the world. With its millions of users, foraying into fintech was a beneficial task because of the existing customers on their platforms. While there were talks about Whatsapp Messenger launching its own fintech platform, India-born Hike messenger has gone ahead and launched its own payments platform. Hike has launched peer-to-peer and banking options that is enabled by the government's UPI system.
