In the past years, FinTech was (and still) heavily verticalized, recreating the offline activities of financial services by bringing them online and introducing efficiencies. All industries, especially the financial services industry is going through dramatic changes as a consequence of changing customer behavior, increasing expectations, channel proliferation, disruption, innovative use and adoption of new technologies and the digitization of business and society in general. This involves the cost reductions, increasing top-line revenue, and mitigating risk remain the key drivers, also in corporate and retail banking.

The key elements under the upcoming development of FinTech will as below:

• Be portable and interoperable
• Become more ubiquitous and accessible
• Move to the background and infrastructure
• Cybersecurity and data analytics

This is exciting for the stakeholders of FinTech, who will no longer have to search for new ways to pay, invest, save, and spend. It will be a shift for any direct-to-consumer brands, who will be forced to compete on non-brand dimensions and could lose their customer relationships to aggregators during their daily living.

The pandemic COVID-19 has brought unprecedented challenges in society but at the same time fostered the growth and development of FinTech and digital transformation. “FinTech Awards 2020” Award Category – Adversity Award in 1) Good Use of FinTech Technology; and 2) Anti-Pandemic FinTech Product are specially made to recognise and credit FinTech contributors’ effort in the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).