Next frontier in banking is a marriage of fintechs, banks

Recently, two things happened in the ICT industry and caught my attention. The first was news that Kenya’s quest to bring to life the first Technopolis was confirmed as a pipe dream, blamed on lack of funding and labelled as ‘too ambitious.’ Heaped with praise and touted as what would finally emboss the Silicon Savanna title on Kenya, it was expected that in an year, we would have basic infrastructure in place, institutions training a tech-savvy workforce commensurate to opportunities from the country’s bustling tech-enterprises.

The second thing was that my bank - a legacy financial institution I have been with for the last 25 years - sent me text messages, notifying me of a new piece of innovation. Never mind that it is an update to my mobile banking app. I would, upon considering the offer, access instant loans up to a certain limit with flexible repayment periods. For the indifferent ones like myself, it bothered me that my bank took that long to jump onto the bandwagon, seeing as I have been drowned with options left, right and centre to date.