Key fintech industry trends in 2022

In recent days, Digital Horizon, one of the leading venture capital funds specializing in fintech companies, released its annual “Fintech Trends for 2022” report.

The “Fintech Trends for 2022” report

The year 2021 for fintech was a very good year, considering that funding in the sector grew by 96% compared to the previous year

The data from the report shows that in the new year we are likely to see mainly the development of fintech to support microentrepreneurs, digital payments in the metaverse and the “second reality” as well as green fintech.

The detailed report considers all of the effects that the pandemic has brought on the fintech industry, with the sharp increase in the use of digital for both work and buying goods, and highlights 7 main trends that will develop throughout the new year.

NFTs and the metaverse among the 2022 trends

In these trends, the lion’s share seems to be taken by digital payments, which will become more and more important for the life of all of us, including alternative cryptocurrencies. 

Looking only at the United States, about 14.5 million (about 6.5%) of adults do not have a bank account. So, here’s where cryptocurrency payments could soon be a possible alternative solution for these people.

But considering that at the end of 2021 there was a lot of talk about the Metaverse, according to the experts at Digital Horizon it is very likely that in the new year we will witness the launch of digital payments in the metaverse. NFTs and DeFi are the basis for the development of the metaverse whose uses and modalities are still to be discovered. But it is very likely that 2022 will see a further spread of NFT and tokenization projects in finance and digital payments. 

Needless to say, as part of the sustainability and green megatrend in fintech as well, it will be inevitable that we will move towards more and more eco-friendly solutions between now and the next 3-5 years. 

Artificial intelligence (AI), advanced data analytics, tokens and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) are some of the most promising fintech solutions for a sustainable financial sector, as highlighted in the latest report “Fintech and the ESG Data Challenge” by French bank Bnp Paribas.

Speaking about the fintech trends report, Alan Vaskman, Founder and Managing Partner of Digital Horizon, commented: 

“The past few years have been unexpected and difficult, but the fintech industry has adapted to the new challenges and opportunities in our daily lives and driven innovation throughout this time. As the world grapples with how life post-Covid will look, as well as the looming green agenda and arrival of metaverses, fintech’s role in our lives is set to not only continue, but to accelerate”.

The year of CBDCs

Finally, 2022 will most likely also be the year we see the first Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) at work. During the Winter Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese state will almost certainly launch a pilot of its own digital yuan, which now looks set to be launched on the financial market. 

And it’s clear that this will be a disruptive element in global finance, with other nations whose digital currency projects are now at an advanced stage likely to follow.