The 7 D’s of Emerging Financial Technology

Emerging technology will change how corporations can manage, track and monetize customers. Technology has forever changed how virtually every industry conducts business. New and emerging solutions continue to revolutionize financial services, and from both a business and consumer perspective, are dramatically impacting how we manage clients and their money.

There are more ways than ever before to track our spending and make payments. We pay bills online and review transactions or transfer funds through our bank’s mobile app. However, increased online and even social media activity has meant that, whether we know it and consent to it or not, companies everywhere are collecting our Pii, or Personally Identifiable Information. Changing laws will soon prevent companies in the U.S. from using this data without consent from its owner – the consumer – and technology is playing a huge role by increasingly following the seven D’s; a pattern that changes how spending can be seen, tracked and leveraged without explicit permission.

Digitized. The financial industry has seen consumers’ rising demand for more online and mobile services. Many consumers now even wish to handle transactions as complex as a mortgage online. This cultural shift and the proliferation of online and social media have created more data than ever for corporations to collect and eventually sell. However, while the industry moves toward digital processes to save money, time and trees, many systems for customer account opening and customer account data still rely heavily on paper-based systems, file folders and offsite document storage. Personal information will soon be in a digitized format too, available via an app for you and only you to update and give companies permission to access.

Dematerialized. The days of walking around with a camera, a GPS device, a phone and a compass are indeed long gone. As technology improves, separate devices are redundant and instead, dematerialized into applications hosted on a smartphone or tablet. Similarly, buying software on a CD-rom is ancient history, as the market has moved to cloud-hosted and SaaS solutions. These require little to no spend on hardware and enable rapid updating and technological improvement rather than re-sales.

Demonetized. A consumer can download a personal financial management app, use it to track spending and better save for a down payment on a home – a life changing tool, and the app was completely free. Many new technologies not only bring incredible value, but are also incredibly affordable for a business or a consumer. Square, for instance, allows small businesses – a cab driver or a local fruit stand owner- to easily collect payment, using a small, inexpensive piece of hardware. We often accept “freeware,” knowing that with is comes advertisements, such as with internet music provider, Pandora. Equally, consumers understand nothing is truly free, and now more often consider how the company “giving” us the software might be otherwise monetize our data. Like it or not, it is a major trend.

Disruptive. We all use technology that, upon establishment, disrupted its respective industry while bringing consumers a new service. Uber reinvented how we view car services, largely since the app makes not only finding a car in the area, but paying instant and convenient. AirBnB now sells more rooms per night than the top 11 hotel chains combined. B2ME technology for the financial industry will soon embrace another big change, allowing individuals to update and control their Pii data sets via an app. By granting a bank or business real-time permission to access the data instead of filling out the same paperwork time and time again, consumers protect their personal information and streamline processes like opening a bank account.

Distributed. Technology is moving toward a distributed approach. Bitcoin, for example, has taken currency and distributed and digitized it. Personal data should, and will be soon become distributed, or put back into each consumer’s hands to control.

Decentralized. We are moving away from centralized control of information by the government and large consolidated warehouses. Instead, information is increasingly housed in smaller data sets distributed over broad networks of computers and systems. This is a positive change, as it reduces the industry’s energy footprint and decreases risk.

There is little we cannot already do with our smartphones. We can find directions, shop, even connect it to a wearable device to track our heart rates. With something this sophisticated in our back pockets, it makes it that much more frustrating to give your bank the same data over and over again. Mobile technology has been the answer to so much already, and it will soon be the key to holding, updating, controlling and most importantly – protecting our personal data.