It’s been another big year for the financial services and banking sector, but 2021 was just the beginning of a massive structural change for the industry. With NFTs, bitcoin, and other transformative technologies breaking into the mainstream, what lies ahead in 2022?

Forbes Picks Fintech and Banking’s Winners and Losers in 2021

In this cheeky – though some might say snarky – article on the winners and losers in financial services for 2021, Forbes senior contributor, Ron Shevlin, doesn’t hold back on his analysis. From Square to Plaid to N26, Shevlin assess what worked, what didn’t work, and what may still fall apart as the financial services sector looks ahead to 2022.

Ready to read? You can do that here.

Visa CEO, Kelly, Talks Digital Transformation

While Visa might have been on the receiving end of Ron Shevlin’s jabs, its CEO, AL Kelly, shared a more sober assessment of the state of digital transformation for the financial services sector earlier this year. During an interview on Marketplace, Kelly focused in on the rise of ‘buy now, pay later’ companies like AfterPay and Klarna and how it’s affected traditional payment processors, including Visa.

You can learn more here.

American Banker’s 2022 Payment Trends Predictions

You might see a trend beginning to develop by this third article on predictions in financial services and payment technologies in 2022. American Banker also predicts that ‘buy now, pay later,’ will continue to be one of the most disruptive developments for financial services organizations in 2022. Along with this trend, the article’s authors – John Adams and Kate Fitzgerald  – also contend that nonfungible tokens – NFTs – will move from a niche technology to have applicable uses in the payments space. The authors shared that: “[s]ince NFTs usually are tied to visual imagery, they can also feel less abstract than cryptocurrency does.”

Skeptical? You can learn more here.