Fintech and associated technologies. Second part

The fintech work in the finance industry as traditional banks we know, but they emerged with the promise of providing services, reducing costs and bringing the customer closer through the use of technology and not face-to-face channels as in the traditional financial industry. It was stated so by José Antonio Schmucke Moreno, CTO of e4Cashin Venezuela, in the second discussion of fintech and associated technologies.

“We currently have payment methods, insurance brokers, real estate, regulation systems and even the climate itself which are our new tech areas. But the reality is that this type of company already existed in the 90s and 2000.”

Moreno adds that some of them – very successful – used technological innovation to create new ways of offering products and services, such as Microsoft and Apple, Google and Facebook. “And when talking about fintech we can mention PayPal, Venmos and M-Pesa, plus some interesting cases such as UBER and Airbnb”, which transformed taxi and shared leasing services thanks to the use of technology.

In this regard, Moreno raises the questions: “Is it possible to imagine living today without any of these technologies? Is it possible no to use their products? Do you believe in a possible world without them today?

Fintech and associated technologies

The CTO of e4Cash in Venezuela defines below the main technologies they are using in fintech.

API’s, for example, represents the ability of communication between software components. It is the set of calls to certain libraries that offer access services from the processes and represents a method to achieve programming abstraction. It is a layer of abstraction that allows us homologated communication. The term API has evolved a bit with the revolution of web services that led to what is now known as the API REST.

With respect to P2P networks, the specialist says that they consist of a computer network that works without clients or fixed servers, which gives it flexibility impossible to achieve otherwise. This is obtained thanks to the fact that the network works in the form of a series of nodes that behave as equals. In few words, it means that the computers are connected to the current P2P network at the same time as clients and servers with respect to the other connected computers.

Now we got to talk about blockchain technology, which “allows the transfer of digital data with very sophisticated coding and in a completely secure way.” It would be like the book of accounting entries of a company where all entries and exits of money are recorded. In this case we talk about a book of digital events. But in addition, according to Moreno, it contributes with a tremendous novelty: “This transfer does not require a centralized intermediary that identifies and certifies the information”, but is distributed in multiple independent nodes that register and validate it without the need for trust between them. Once entered, the information cannot be deleted, only new records can be added, and it will not be legitimized unless most of them agree to do so.

Smart contracts consist of a computer program that executes agreements established between two or more parties making certain actions happen as a result of the compliance of a series of specific conditions. “That is, when a previously scheduled condition exists, the smart contract automatically executes the corresponding clause,” he adds.

Another important process highlighted by the interviewee is known as Big Data (massive data), which consists of collecting large amounts of data and its immediate analysis to find hidden information, recurring patterns, new correlations, among others.

Moreno concludes the interview by referring to the tools used by today’s fintech, such as the cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning, text to speed, IoT, among others.

M.Pino