How might mobile technology assist the fintech sector in mitigating new dangers and maintaining robust growth?
By 2027, the worldwide fintech sector will be worth more than US$225 billion, and mobile network operators will play a critical role in this digital revolution of finance. Mobile technology has unleashed great potential for innovation through 5G, AI, cloud services, and new platform models, increasing competition, cutting entry barriers, and fast accelerating development. The commercial opportunities for operators and their partners are clear, as mobile technology helps to make the industry faster and more trusted in what it does – but in order to capitalize on that opportunity, those seeking to play a role must fully understand the technologies involved and establish the right relationships with the organizations that support them.
Choosing the correct partner for any fintech project is rarely simple, but there is a way to make informed judgments with no uncertainty or delay. Connected Industries in Hall 4 of MWC Barcelona 2024 brings together some of the world’s most inventive and prominent organizations influencing the future of mobile finance. This will culminate in the Fintech and Mobile Commerce Summit, which will bring together investors, senior decision-makers, and thought leaders from mobile financial services organizations, as well as more horizontally oriented tech enterprises like those working in cybersecurity. This is the ideal location to establish the high-level business ties required for collaboration.
There are significant obstacles to overcome, notably in responding to fraud. The US Federal Trade Commission forecasts that consumer losses to fraud in the United States alone would be approximately $8.8 billion in 2022, a 30% rise over the previous year, with phone fraud accounting for the most losses per person. Attendees will discuss the current attack vectors used by fraudsters, such as’social engineering’ schemes, and how the sector may effectively respond.
As identity authentication solutions expand across the mobile fintech ecosystem, drawing on more sophisticated KYC methods at the point of onboarding and using AI to combat false identities, significant progress has been made in building trust in voice calls, but much work remains to be done. The GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative is critical in this regard, since it provides worldwide access to network insights that may be used to combat fraud.
It is also critical to understand how operators are integrating new technology capabilities, like as AI, with new platform models based on APIs, to offer disruptive financial solutions that can scale quickly. Insurtech, for example, is already prospering across the mobile ecosystem, and loan decision-making, based on operator data, is a well-established and rapidly increasing paradigm.
We’ll discuss how the recent surge in mobile wallet-based solutions has altered the reality of how we make daily payments. As mobile technology displaces cash with seamless POS transactions and the focus on digital currencies such as CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) grows, payments are now mobile by default, paving the way for widespread adoption of conversational commerce via chatbots, GenAI, next best action, and embedded finance. With 200 million monthly active mobile business users on WhatsApp alone, and 52% of firms selling through social media by 2023, mobile has really become the center of daily commerce.
Connected Industries in Hall 4 at MWC Barcelona is the single best chance for mobile fintech companies to meet the right people and form the right relationships to capitalize on this fascinating field and define its future. Last year, we had our highest-ever attendance from non-telco businesses, with 56% coming from adjacent verticals, giving this the best chance for cross-pollination across similar interests in which mobile technology may play a role. It is becoming a staple among top decision-makers; in 2022, more than half of all our guests were director-level or higher, and they were joined by 161 ministerial delegations from 124 nations.