The digitization of currency presents an incredible opportunity for the world’s incumbent financial institutions, from payment processing to credit and insurance products, wealth management, and currency transfer and exchange. Yet the regulatory, security, and risk management challenges faced by these institutions have paved the way for a flood of new entrants.  In 2015 alone, over $19B was invested in FinTech to disrupt the $4.7T financial services industry.

A successful bank robbery used to require careful planning, orchestration, weaponry, and a bit of luck.  Furthermore, the bank’s maximum loss was limited to its physical assets locked away in the vault. In 2013, Russian cybergang Cabarnak stole $1B from over 100 financial institutions, using nothing more than a few lines of malicious code.  How can today’s financial institutions, encumbered with bureaucracy, legacy systems, and regulatory burdens innovate ahead of tomorrow’s financial reality?

Enter Israel

With domain expertise ranging from enterprise software to information security, business intelligence, and the blockchain, Israel’s brightest engineers, technologists, and data scientists have started applying their knowledge to one of the hottest sectors in the world; FinTech.

Fintech, at its core, is the use of technology to eliminate market inefficiencies. To illustrate, let’s look at one of the biggest money markets in the world today; remittances. Remittances are expected to reach an estimated $610 billion in 2016, rising to $636 billion in 2017. As of the end of 2014, the global average cost of sending $200 was 8%. Let’s think about that for a second. Money is now data, sitting in the cloud, with virtually no cost to disassemble, redistribute, and reassemble. So why does sending $200 still cost $16? Due to the regulatory burdens combating money laundering and terrorism financing, international remittances sent via mobile technology accounted for less than 2% of remittance flows in 2013.  But as mobile phones reach critical mass in the developing world, this will change drastically, and Israeli technology will play a role.