Good People, what are your expectations for 2021? I am calling it the year of accelerated growth. The massive shift to technology-driven productivity which the pandemic has seeded will unlock more vistas in markets. I have been working on a framework which is based on the construct that all digital platforms have one final steady state for capturing massive value: offering financial services. Yes, when you have a platform, in any domain, you must offer a financial services product!
Looking at Chinese digital platforms (Tencent, Alibaba) and US counterparts (Google, Facebook), my conclusion is this: every platform will become a fintech company at the end. So, I do want to see how Tekedia would become an investment club, a lending ecosystem, etc, at the lowest marginal cost, to members and readers in the ecosystem. This construct tracks the recent trajectories of Facebook and Google. Alibaba and Tencent have validated my thesis as I have studied their evolutions and revolutions in the markets.
MPesa thinks it has a great platform, and wants to add wealth management and other services in addition to payment.
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The pioneer of a mobile-banking revolution in sub-Saharan Africa is in talks with financial-services providers about expanding its offerings over the next five years, as it seeks to emulate the success of Ant Group’s Alipay.
Safaricom Plc. is in negotiations with fund managers, investment banks and insurance companies to partner on a raft of mobile phone-based savings and wealth-management products, Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa said in an interview in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
What do I need to do for Tekedia? Get a partnership with a licensed operator in that domain, and make the services available to where the demand is already available. As I have noted, the empires of tomorrow would be built by those who control demand, and not the suppliers.
In the digital age, what matters is not who controls supply, but who controls demand. Supply is largely infinite as there are many ways to get to the web, and because it is infinite, users congregate to platforms to help them navigate and make sense of the web.
In 1980, before the digital age as we have it today, the most powerful people in media were newspaper publishers. They were the people you needed to reach to get your message to the world. They decided what everyone read on the dailies and they were powerful. They controlled supply and by controlling supply, they shaped everything including advertising.
So, Tekedia could become a mini-bank, investing entity, etc, because we have people. Yes, Fintechnolization of Platforms is a promise in the next coming years.
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Fintech as a standalone business will at some point in the future look like the national grid, where its best customers continue to disconnect.
Any digital native that controls demand can have its own fintech, it’s a natural evolution, no one likes giving away money on something you can comfortably build and keep within.
The trajectory is this: from every company looking like a tech company to all the tech company domesticating a financial arm, giving the platform users no option to leave the ecosystem, once locked in…