Part 2 of a series of articles covering the fast-emerging Fintech ecosystem in Latin America.
As sessions continue at the inaugural FinnoSummit by LendIt Fintech in December, I find myself in a fully packed, standing room only hall buzzing with investors and entrepreneurs. The excitement of this crowd reminded me of the early days of the Fintech era in the United States.
The next person on stage is Anabel Perez of Novopayments, moderated by Mariano Carranza of Goldman Sachs.
This session is particularly exciting to me because I also run a Fintech infrastructure company that enables banks and Fintech’s to launch their products and services quickly without spending millions and years to build internally.
Anabel’s Novopayment provides a middle layer and APIs (Application Programming Interface) to Fintech startups as “Banking as a Service” (BaaS) for innovators to grow. The core product of Novopayment is an open banking platform to allow innovators to break down silos and focus on the customer experience by using a variety of APIs to access key banking features through Novopayment.
Novopayment’s technology is completely focused on core banking services that enable full-stack neobanks (digital banks). Fintechs seeking to provide banking services may launch a complete solution within six months. The traditional players can’t compete on speed and budget with the innovative combination provided by Novopayment.
Anabel spoke about their approach to open banking, a hot topic in Europe and other jurisdictions.
Novopayment is keeping a close eye on the European Union’s regulatory framework and they are bringing compliance front and center to their platform play.
She is well aware that playing in between innovation and regulatory ambiguity is dangerous and she hopes that firms like hers will provide this bridge between regulatory constraints and innovative solutions.
Anabel made some bold predictions when the moderators asked her what are some of the biggest challenges in the next 12-24 months. Anabel stated that she is betting on collaboration. There will be more companies like Novopayment that is willing to work with both traditional Banks and Fintechs to further the spirit of collaboration.
Novopayment claims that it has developed over 100 APIs servicing 11 different markets. Their application network enables its customers to create new ways to onboard customers and functionalities to provide a better customer experience.
Anabel is looking forward to a future where customers will get credit whenever and wherever they need it. To get there, a solid tech stack is the key and laying down the foundation today will allow a digital banking future – one that is approaching rapidly.
Getting to a fully digitized banking future is not without its difficulties. Regulations are welcomed but sometimes rules stand in the way of innovation as too often the regulations in place have been crafted for an analog past. Additionally, certain standards haven’t been yet defined or tested.
Echoing many innovators at the conference, everyone is hoping for regulation that will raise the bar without hampering innovation – a bit of a tightrope act.
Look out for Novopayment as one of the new banking infrastructure companies out there that will help bridge the chasm between innovative Fintech companies and traditional banks in Latin America. Thank you for paving the road.
Timothy Li is a Senior Contributor for Crowdfund Insider. Li is the Founder of Kuber, MaxDecisions, an Alchemy. Li has over 15 years of Fintech industry experience. He’s passionate about changing the finance and banking landscape. Kuber launched Fluid, a credit building product designed for college students to borrow up to $500 interest-free. Kuber’s 2nd product Mobilend is a true debt consolidation product, aiming to lower debt for all Americans. MaxDecisions provides financial institutions with the latest A.I. and Machine Learning algorithms and Alchemy is a state of the art end-to-end white-labeled lending platform powering some of the best Fintech companies in the world. Li also teaches at the University of Southern California School of Engineering.