How can mobile technology help the fintech industry tackle new risks and maintain strong growth?
MWC Barcelona is the largest and most influential event for the connectivity ecosystem. Whether you’re a global mobile operator, device manufacturer, technology provider, vendor, content owner, or are simply interested in the future of tech, you need to be here.
It’s the place to find out where the industry, your business and your career are headed. Miss out on MWC Barcelona, miss out on the next 12 months.
The global fintech market will exceed US$225bn in value by 2027, and mobile network operators are at the heart of this digital transformation in financial services. Mobile technology has brought with it enormous potential for innovation through 5G, AI, cloud services, and new platform models – spurring competition, lowering barriers to entry, and rapidly accelerating growth. The commercial opportunities for operators and their partners are clear, as mobile technology helps to make the industry ever faster and more trusted in what it does – but to make good on that opportunity, those seeking to play a part must fully understand the technologies involved, and strike up the right relationships with the organisations behind them.
Choosing the right partner for any fintech project is rarely free of complexity – but thankfully there is a route to making informed decisions on this with minimal ambiguity or delay. Connected Industries in Hall 4 at MWC Barcelona 2024 brings together some of the world’s most innovative and influential organisations shaping the future of mobile fintech. This will culminate with the Fintech and Mobile Commerce Summit - an event for investors, senior decision-makers and thought leaders from organisations in mobile financial services, as well as more horizontally focused tech firms such as those working in cybersecurity. This is the perfect place to make the high-level business connections needed for collaboration.
There are some considerable challenges to tackle, particularly in response to fraud. The US Federal Trade Commission reports consumer losses to fraud in the US alone of nearly $8.8bn in 2022, a 30% increase on the previous year – with phone fraud accounting for the highest losses per person. Attendees will consider the attack vectors now favoured by fraudsters, such as ‘social engineering’ scams, and how the industry can best respond.
As identity authentication solutions continue to scale across the mobile fintech ecosystem – drawing on more sophisticated KYC methods at the point of onboarding, and using AI to counter false identities – there has been considerable progress in building trust in voice calls, but much work remains to be done. The GSMA’s Open Gateway project is key here, by unlocking access to network insights on a global scale to help fight fraud.
It is also crucial to understand how operators are combining new technological capabilities such as AI, and new platform models based on APIs, to launch disruptive fintech solutions – and ensure they can scale rapidly. Insurtech for instance, is now thriving across the mobile ecosystem and decision-making on lending, underpinned by operator data, is an established model which is growing fast.
We’ll address how the recent explosion in mobile wallet-based solutions has transformed the reality of how we make everyday payments. As mobile tech displaces cash with seamless POS transactions, and the focus on digital currencies such CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) grows, payments are now mobile by default – opening up the mass-adoption potential for conversational commerce through chatbots, GenAI, next best action, and embedded finance. With 200 million monthly active mobile business users on WhatsApp alone, and 52% of businesses selling through social channels in 2023, mobile truly now sits at the heart of daily commerce.
Connected Industries in Hall 4 at MWC Barcelona is the single best opportunity in the calendar for mobile fintech players to meet the right people and forge the right partnerships to make the most of this exciting space, and to shape its future. Last year we drew our largest ever attendance from non-telco industries, with 56% comprised of adjacent verticals, making this the richest opportunity for cross-pollination between compatible interests in which mobile technology can play a part. It’s now an established fixture among leading decision-makers – in 2022 over 50% of all our attendees were director-level or above, joined by 161 ministerial delegations representing 124 countries.
The Connected Industries stage in Hall 4 is sponsored by Accenture and Tonomus Neom
