The last decade has seen around 400 launches of licensed neobanks, 1 1. "Simon-Kucher introduces the Global Neobanking Radar database to rank and track challenger banks and their path to profitability," press release, Simon-Kucher, May 27, 2022. Incumbent banks, nonbank challengers (such as fintech players), stand-alone digital attackers, and large consumer and payments platforms have all launched neobanks in recent years, making the competitive pool increasingly vast and diverse. The term neobank has been used at least since the mid-2010s to describe fintechs that are challenging traditional banks by providing an increasingly comprehensive suite of banking services (as opposed to just payments, personal financial management, etc.) through innovative and low-cost digital channels. Depending on geography, these institutions have also been called challenger banks, virtual banks, digital banks, online banks, and internet-only banks. Over the years, the definition of neobank has expanded and blurred. Many traditional banks have launched their own exclusively digital plays, and fintechs have partnered with traditional banks to provide banking services.

Over the past decade, fintech firms have set out to reinvent banking and financial services. One major market trend is the growth of the neobank, a new type of bank that is 100% digital. Instead of using physical branch networks, neobanks service customers using software and applications, allowing customers to transact on their mobile devices and providing accounts with much lower fees and more features. This trend to digitizing banking and the exchange of value is a natural progression of the information revolution to embrace digital. Fintech is an exciting market that continues to grow.

Munich, 14th February 2019 – Today, FinTech pioneer Fidor, a leading digital banking group is announcing its new banking chatbot, designed in collaboration with Finn AI, the world's leading AI-powered conversational banking technology provider. This development distinguishes Fidor as one of the first digital banking service providers to embed a virtual assistant within its technology stack. Bank customers will benefit from a market-ready digital bank platform with pre-integrated conversational AI, including deep machine learning capabilities and natural language understanding. The conversational bot is part of Fidor's strategy to accelerate the adoption of AI, Machine Learning and Robotisation in banking when relevant to the customer. The company is renowned as an early adopter when it comes to innovation, new technologies developed in-house or through partnerships thanks to its API-based platform.

As mentioned in the first part of these two pieces, we talk a lot about fintech. We talk about it as though it is one thing, when in fact it is many. There are nuances to this market, which is over a decade old, that need to be fleshed out in more detail because, as with technology in general, some of this fintech is in the hype cycle, some is in the chasm, and some is coming into the mainstream as accepted. I call this the Chris Skinner Fintech Wave (loosely based on Gartner's Hype Cycle), which I didn't share in the first entry, but now that you know where I'm going, here it is: As you can see, some technologies are rising, some falling and some are now widely adopted, such as lending marketplaces. In this second part, I thought it worth discussing the remaining areas that are primarily generic technologies with a financial flavour, such as AI, machine learning, IoT and biometrics.