All indicators confirm that investment in fintech, new technology that can improve and automate financial services, is skyrocketing and is expected to exceed $30 billion by 2020. This investment will translate into dramatic time and cost savings and enhancements to service offerings from financial institutions. Here are the top 5 fintech trends everyone should be watching in 2020 because they will impact anything that involves money. For many years, marketing experts espoused the benefits of personalization to attract customers and keep them loyal. Today, thanks to big data and artificial intelligence that helps us process, store, and drive insights from the data, hyper-personalization is possible on an unprecedented scale.

AI has already changed how we interact with mobile devices. Now we ask for directions and get answers to random questions. A large number of consumers ask our phones to buy and ship items to our house. Focusing on how AI can reduce fraud misses the real opportunities which Mercator identified here, here, and here. "Still, even with the likes of PayPal, Wal-Mart, Target, and other big players coming into the field, only about 22% of merchants accept mobile wallets as a means of payment. For many of these merchants, the mobile payments industry is still in its infancy, with issues such as security, information privacy, and other evolving elements standing in the way of adoption. With artificial intelligence (AI), however, mobile payment platforms might soon feature among the top payment options for merchants and their customers. AI has been the disruptive force behind many tech innovations within the fintech industry. The ability to process massive amounts of data and deliver insightful ...

Mobile phones are still a huge deal in the tech and business worlds. According to a recent survey by Deloitte, about 89% of American smartphone users typically look at their phones within an hour of waking up. These users go on to look at their phones over 12 billion times collectively during the day, presenting a world of opportunity for businesses as illustrated in this infographic from the telco, Ooma. And as more consumers remain hooked up to their phones, mobile payment platforms continue to show unmetered growth, with many new providers taking advantage of tech innovations to make their mark in an overcrowded field. By the end of 2015, there were over 100 mobile payment providers in the US alone, with that number expected to have grown in recent times.