FinTech Wire #7: From Russia with Law and New Successes of Our Old Friends

This week FinTech Wire continues one of the stories we mentioned previously, but we also have a lot of brand new information that we’ve carefully selected just for you. Get your reading glasses and enjoy the news about Stripe, Facebook’s Libra, Ford’s vans and a case of split personality in one of the most powerful governments in the world!

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Service Workers in Progressive Web Apps: Lie-Fi Busters

Run an online business long enough and it’s impossible not to come across Progressive Web Apps. Once you have, you might be naturally drawn to the many benefits a PWA offers, but how do you know it’s the best choice for your application? One way is to start with Service Workers: the unsung heroes of PWAs’ success and merciless Lie-Fi busters. Understanding their impact on performance, accessibility and engagement might be the key to unlocking new business value, without losing sight of potential challenges. This quick walkthrough focuses on the essential components, definitions and strategies to help you keep calm and make Service Workers work—both on and offline.

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TOP 20 FinTech Companies & Startups to Watch in 2021

The year 2021 will be all about personalization, integrations and connections. Customers want to experience, not just use digital products and they want a broader spectrum of services. That’s why FinTech companies are joining forces with firms offering added value. Finally, people expect connection with other people. Companies who will create communities around their products will win people’s minds and wallets. Recently, we wrote about FinTech trends for 2021, now let’s talk about top FinTech companies to watch in 2021.

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FinTech Trends 2021: Global Outlook

The year 2020 has brought many breakthroughs. The massive shift towards remote work has proven things can be done, even if people don’t work face-to-face. The prolonged lockdown has probably changed customer spending habits forever and has impacted many industries, not only e-commerce. Meanwhile, the FinTech stage has grown exponentially, bringing comfort and convenience to everyone, even the unbanked. What will the industry look like next year? Here is our list of the most interesting FinTech trends in 2021.

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Top FinTech Accelerators in Berlin

We’ve already analysed the most impressive FinTech accelerators in Tel Aviv and in London, but we’re not planning to stop. This series of articles will be a frequent visitor on the Code & Pepper blog and we’re going to keep them all up to date. This time, let’s take a trip to the capital city of Germany—Berlin—where cultures mix, currywurst is everywhere and so are FinTechs. Come along and take a closer look at FinTech accelerators in Berlin!

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InsurTech Industry Guide: All You Need To Know About Insurance Technology

InsurTech stands for insurance technology, but this term can still be considered pretty abstract. After all, how can cutting edge technology work in the insurance industry? As with all innovative ideas, there are many ways to reach the goal. Read on to learn all you need to know about InsurTech industry: its history, how it’s used to make life easier and accelerate business, and what its future is going to look like!

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FinTech Wire #3: Acquisition Drama, New Challengers in UK and Digital Currency on the Move

How do you filter the market data to pick out the most valuable insights? Does the amount of news and updates make your head spin? The FinTech Wire comes to the rescue with a carefully selected combination of brand stories which are shaking the world of finance and banking. This week, we’ll be hearing from Visa, Pennyworth, Monument, SoFi, JP Morgan, and NerdWallet. Let’s roll!

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Key Roles in E2E Software Development

App development is like professional football. Companies are like teams and their employees are like players, coaches, and managers. After all, what happens backstage and between the games is equally important to the actual performance on the football pitch. Every member of the group is crucial for success, though their roles are different. Read on to learn all you need to know about the roles in software development teams!

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FinTech Wire #2: Impact Investing, Biometric Cards and Shoppable Emails

Code & Pepper is calling all FinTech buffs hungry for the latest industry insights! FinTech Wire comes back with a juicy selection of fresh news, hand-picked from top headlines and press releases. This week, we’ll be hearing from major movers and shakers in sustainable investing, biometric authentication, instant purchasing, cryptocurrency, and blockchain…

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7 Ways FinTech Innovations Improve the Customer Experience

Do you ever feel like your favorite institution or app can do better? Implement responsive UX, improve helpline, simplify onboarding or just include you more in the conversation? Many customers feel that way about digital products. They don’t want to be cogs in the machine, grinding the same load every time they contact the institution or use its services. Customers want to be heard: here’s how to do that in FinTech.

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FinTech Wire #1: PayTech Unicorns, Social Trading and UBI on Blockchain

Only one thing is certain in modern business: stay in the loop or drop out. With that in mind, we’re introducing the FinTech Wire—a weekly news feed curated by Code & Pepper. It covers top headlines in finance, technology, banking, and everything in between to keep you informed, inspired or maybe even intrigued… Tune into the #FinTechWire on our LinkedIn and Twitter or explore the extended version below.

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Progressive Web Apps: Towards an Immersive User Experience

Progressive Web Apps have gone from buzzword to mainstream in record time. Freeing the user experience from the boundaries defined by devices and network conditions marks another step in the digital evolution. So does bridging the gap between web and native applications to offer unprecedented usability and reliability. While PWAs are making headway in boosting performance and engagement, Code & Pepper investigates their key features and business growth potential.

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Digital Transformation in Banking and Financial Services

Digital transformation is like taxes or iPhones: present everywhere. Despite many CEOs, CTOs and CIOs being interested, not all of them have a clear picture. In reality, it’s not only about technology. It’s a tool that enables teams to work efficiently, creating even more valuable products. But first – security.

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The Quickest Guide to Google Lighthouse Tool

Testing web applications in an effective way can be super-simple nowadays, thanks to many available tools. When it comes to examining basic issues, Google Lighthouse is one of the best and most popular instruments to do it, so every web developer and website owner should be familiar with it. Especially if it’s available for free, built in WebPageTest, PageSpeed Insights, Chromium based browsers (such as Chrome and Edge) and as an extension for Firefox. So why don’t you try it out on your own? This guide is the quickest way to start!

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Infrastructure as Code: Creating and Deploying Web Applications on AWS Using CloudFormation

The cloud adoption trend isn’t slowing down. That’s no wonder: cloud computing has completely changed the way we think about IT infrastructure. However, for organizations that deal with never-ending deployments, the complexity of provisioning and managing all the infrastructure elements can become a headache and a source of serious issues. In this case, infrastructure codification, known as Infrastructure as Code, comes to the rescue. 

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The Importance of Quality Assurance in FinTech Software Development

In the app economy, green is the new black. Investors, companies and teams expect apps to perform and deliver sales results overnight – or at least quickly enough to verify assumptions of a minimum viable product (MVP). Especially today, when COVID-19 washes off many companies and the future is uncertain. Sometimes, when the pressure is on, pressing the “off” button might be healthy. Not only under the current market conditions but in software development overall. That button is quality assurance and it can be an anchor for the business, guaranteeing customer loyalty and lower maintenance costs.

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API Developer Experience: Tricks of the Trade

From data aggregators at the core of open banking to payment processors for digital marketplaces – many FinTech products deliver value through application programming interfaces (aka APIs). In those cases, it’s hard to speak of User Experience as such. What becomes important then is Developer Experience (DX), which reflects how easy it is to work and integrate with an API. This in turn, can have a huge impact on the final quality and scalability of the API product. So if your goal is to build a highly-performant, future-proof and integration-ready solution, don’t forget about Developer Experience. Use the pro tips below to accelerate and empower your API development process.

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Essential Security Standards and Requirements for FinTech Apps

In the UK, FinTech apps should be handled in a way similar to banking institutions, both from the legal and technological point of view. It obviously imposes a lot of responsibility and work to ensure the system is 100% secure, so users can trust it with their money. But what does it mean in practice? Let’s take a deeper look at the FinTech security standards you’ll need to deal with in order to abide by the rules, while still being able to offer the most to your customers.

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Painless Payments: Top 5 Online Payment Processing Companies for Startups

Every digital business needs a reliable toolset that will support its operations. And for many of them, online payment processing platforms are essential: according to a 2018 survey, 62% of UK’s small and medium enterprises use digital solutions to make or accept payments. However, choosing among a plethora of payment processing companies is not a breeze. This one decision can have serious implications in multiple areas, starting with customer experience, transaction security, and even your business cash flow. 

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PayTech in the Spotlight: Challenges and Opportunities

Payment technology remains one of the most dynamically developing sectors of FinTech. Its disruptive potential and versatility make it the perfect breeding ground for innovation, actively redefining digital experience in finance. However, challenging the status quo comes with a package of challenges in their own right. When coins changing hands are replaced by bitcoin trading platforms and wads of cash are turned into digital wallets – how well is your business prepared for the ultimate digital-first future?

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KYC: Leaders in Digital Identity Verification

As digital finance is gaining traction, the KYC (Know Your Customer) process is becoming vital for sustainable business models. With regulatory compliance at the roots and modern software solutions in all branches of operation, FinTech’s evergreen status relies on striking the right balance between code of conduct and customer experience. While tapping into the ABC of KYC, we begin our due diligence by identifying industry leaders in digital identity verification for financial services.

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Survival of the Resilient: FinTech in the Times of Lockdown

According to its origin myth, FinTech was born out of the global financial crisis and the huge behavioural shift it had brought. Fast forward another 10+ years, and we are on a brink of another economic twist. This time with a slightly different cocktail of inhibitions and attitudes. Although creative and agile by definition—are all FinTechs equally equipped to withstand the blast of a market shakeout? Another week into the general lockdown, the industry’s resilience and adaptability meets trial by fire.

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