I recently joined a new wealthtech firm on a five city roadshow and had the honor to introduce them to the audiences with a short overview on the history of financial technology (fintech), up to present times. In the overview, I made the case that in fact, financial technology has been around as long as there has been mathematics, and showed how the abacus was, in fact, an ancient example of fintech for its time.
Fast forward to today, and fintech as we know it is now squarely centered around the internet via both desktop and mobile devices. No internet, no 21st century fintech. And while the US is a saturated market when it comes to internet coverage, the same is not true elsewhere in the world.
The following piece is a fascinating look at where internet coverage stands worldwide, and in particular, outside the US and in some markets, it's still shockingly deficient but also growing at a dizzying rate. And this explains why so many of the new fintech firms we see are focused outside of the US on the under-banked sector. Like yin and yang. Check it out.
Cindy Taylor/Publisher
"coming online each day, it won’t be long until the whole world is online.
Certainly, the biggest internet trend of the past 20 years is that an increasing amount of people are coming online, therefore the whole world is getting connected.
#1 | 56.1% of the World have Internet Access
“Global Internet Usage” is the term used to measure the number of people who are using the internet. The most recent, April 2019 Global Internet usage sits at 56.1%. Meaning over half of the world has internet access. Back in 2005, this figure was just 16%.
3.2 billion people worldwide have internet access.
#2 | 55% of Web Content is in English
Over half of the internet’s content is in English. This statistic is interesting because just 27% of global internet users speak English. Therefore 28% must be using the internet and accessing English content as a foreign language..."
Full Story at VPNGeeks