This article discusses how there is a large market in developing nations for fintech companies because of their ability create a whole new mobile banking services where traditional banking services do not exist. These companies will be able to do this because there are great indicators that mobile cell usage in developing nations is rapidly increasing across many income levels. The first thing that popped into my mind at this point in the article was the challenges that these companies were going to face when digitizing a country that lacks the infrastructure to do so. The article goes on to highlight the exact challenges that I was thinking of. These challenges are lack of infrastructure and efficient cloud services, users without a data footprint, and consumers who have chaotic and cash based lives. The most important of these issues is the users whose access to the internet is very limited. I believe that market that these fintech companies can actually reach is going to be smaller than they believe due to the fact that people in these developing countries cannot afford smartphones and have access to the internet needed to utilize these fintech services. Once the internet accessibility infrastructure in these countries is much better, these fintech companies will begin to thrive and grow even more.
Article link: https://hbr.org/2017/01/fintech-companies-could-give-billions-of-people-more-banking-options
This is such a cool idea that would be able to help so many people, but I see the problem of getting Internet to people in areas without the infrastructure. As I read your blog post I started thinking about whose job it was to establish this infrastructure. It could be beneficial for a single company to monopolize on the opportunity to set up Internet in a new region, or it could also fall on the government as a way to better their economy.
I think these challenges make sense. Infrastructure is definitely one of the biggest challenges facing the fintech firms. What comes to my mind is that educating these people financially could be another challenge facing these fintech firms.