Fintech adoption to increase soon, PwC partner says
THE ADOPTION rate of financial technology among Thais is likely to pick up velocity in the near future.
“Although fintech in Thailand has yet to be popular like in the US, we have seen a lot of banks entering the fintech business,” Vilaiporn Taweelappontpng, a partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers Thailand, said after a forum on financial tech held yesterday at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s head office.
Many Thai banks have been either doing business related to fintech or joining hands with fintech start-ups to provide customers a greater variety of financial products and services.
As a panellist at the forum on the fintech disruption trend and ecosystem, Vilaiporn said that being faster, cheaper and better, financial transactions provided by fintech start-ups – which are considered as non-financial firms – have become more popular than those in the financial industry.
“Referring to a PwC survey, we found the banking industry was rated the most laggard in good services while the retail sector was ranked the best performer,” she said.
Three major trends were affecting the evolution of fintech – “Generation Me”, baby-boomers and urbanisation.
“The ‘Gen Me’ people – described as a new generation who are digital natives with the ability to adopt IT quickly and are mobile-first – are inclined to be familiar with services on demand. They are likely not to be wealthy yet, resulting in a drive into the sharing economy like the Uber taxi service.
“Also, the urbanisation trend, which would make resources limited and then lead to the sharing-economy concept.”
She said fintech services were now mostly used in three main groups – banking, insurance and payments.
Especially, peer-to-peer financial transactions via platform, system or application are gaining popularity.
