The #FinTech Cool Wall [2017 Q1] 😎

Back by popular demand, here’s the latest [2017 Q1] edition of the FinTech Cool Wall!

I had a lot of feedback on the 2016 Q4 version which I’ve incorporated this time round. Highlights are:

• 📉 Blockchain takes a shocking lurch to the left and is at risk of losing its sub-zero status! I put this down to its growing maturity in the sector. Just like music becomes less cool when your parents start listening to it, so does blockchain when banks start dabbling in it!
• 📈 QR codes are having a renaissance moving up the board towards Cool. This is mostly driven by the Chinese/Korean payments market and Bitcoin users. They do love their QR codes!
• 📉 Wearables take a dive. I think the novelty has worn off. Android Wear 2.0 is coming out in February with NFC and Android Pay support so maybe that’ll help reclaim some coolness?
• 📈 We see Telematics enter the fray — the first time a dedicated InsurTech has made it onto the board.

I’ve had some questions on how the board is calculated. It’s quite simple really…

Cool is a factor of how much Seed/Series A investment is pouring into startups who’s USP is based on that tech, and how many mentions on twitter, by the Top 100 FinTech Influencers, that tech is getting within the context of FinTech (excluding my @cgledhill account so I don’t subconsciously bias it!). It’s also worth noting that this ranks FinTechnology (blockchain, api, big data etc) not FinTech categories (P2P, Decentralised, Distributed, Crowdsourced, Marketplace etc) or #FinTech subsets (RegTech, InsurTech, PayTech etc). I’ll probably do a board for those some other time if there’s demand.

What do you think? Do you agree with the placements? Is there some tech missing? Let me know in the comments below 👇