FinTech penetration in Africa continues to grow as we approach the midpoint in 2023. Despite the global economic downturn and cost of living crises, fintech is robustly evolving to meet the needs of the end-user by providing tailored functionality and tapping into prevailing trends.
One of the ways that FinTechs are able to continue this momentum is through their data capture and processing models. Increasingly, it is not just the functionality that is becoming important to FinTechs but the way in which customers interact with that functionality that is having a causal effect on the success of FinTech businesses across the continent.
This manifests through several different channels. Firstly, the user experience itself: FinTechs can understand how the customer is interacting with their app down to the granular level. This helps determine whether a button should be higher or lower, the font, the style, the placement etc. Everything can be tweaked and fine-tuned based on this data to provide the best user experience possible and ensure that a customer can achieve everything as seamlessly as possible.
Secondly, by interacting with apps, FinTechs can start to build a good picture of you and your financial needs. This means that FinTechs can get a localised understanding of your spending behaviour, saving behaviour, subscriptions etc. In turn, this means that they can create packages or features that align with your specific needs and create a more tailored and specific product experience. This also extends to businesses as well not just individuals. Understanding how a business sells its goods and the volumes it experiences, helps to create a good understanding of how the business operates and how successful it is.
Thirdly, capturing data and being able to present that data back to an end user is in and of itself highly useful. An individual that can understand their spending behaviour may be able to identify tweaks they can make in their own lives to create a healthier relationship with money. Businesses will be able to better understand which of their products is most successful and how they can tweak their product lines to nail their value proposition. Data capture isn’t a one-way street. Helping customers better understand their own data to help them achieve their own goals is also very important.
Many new developments are happening across FinTech and it Is exciting to see how data can create these hyper-localised experiences for end-users.
