The (Not So) Silent Revolution...

Hello! I’m Michael. I started at Fleximize way back in October last year – and we’ve come a seriously long way in that short time. There were 4 of us back then; now we have 14, and in the past few months we’ve loaned money to all sorts of businesses all over the country. Over the last year I’ve worn a million different hats – any of you who own small businesses will know just what that’s like. One of my hats has had me out and about in the world of ‘fintech’ – that’s financial technology for the uninitiated.

No, no, no! Not the boring sort – keep reading!

I’m not going to be talking about developing new trading algorithms, here. I’m talking about a revolution in the way that you and I, and every other human handles money. It’s been a pretty quiet revolution so far, but it is going on all around you; and it’s definitely gaining momentum.

I’ve grown to be pretty obsessed with fintech, so each week for the next few months I’m going to be writing about why it is that each one of your lives will be affected as the companies that make up the industry change the way that all of us experience money.

This may sound like a bit of an exaggeration, particularly given the disastrous name that some sections of finance have earned for themselves. But I’m going to try and show you that this is an entirely different type of finance. Entrepreneurs in the industry have taken lessons from the Silicon Valley startups and are trying to disrupt a millennia old banking industry by focusing on customer centricity. What the user – whether this is a person or a business – wants is paramount to the way fintech companies do business.

You may wonder what I mean when I tell you that the way you ‘experience money’ is about to change. Well… We’ll see changes in access to credit for both consumers and businesses. The way we pay for things and the way we get paid will be faster and easier. Transferring money abroad will be cheaper and quicker. There will be more budgeting tools than you can shake a stick at and better anti-fraud devices. And I haven’t even decided whether we should dip our toes into the vast ocean of bitcoin…

No doubt, there will be growing pains, and not everything will work out. Money is an intensely personal thing (particularly for those of us who are English) and so change may not always come easily. But fintech, and the bright new world of finance that it brings, is here to stay. It’s going to a better world for all of us, and I cannot wait to show you how.