A contributor on a particular Fintech discussion forum made the following statement:

“Had an interesting presentation from one of the world’s largest banks today. I quote: ‘fintech adoption has been overestimated’. They didn’t say what their estimations actually were, but I’d be interested to know if they expected digital challengers like XX to have 400k users (equating to an estimated 0.6% of the UK current account market) whilst still in Beta, not to mention companies like YY now processing £800m in transactions a month.”

Well, if one of the world’s largest banks says something, ought that not to be taken seriously rather than being challenged in this kind of superficial fashion?:

While 400K users while in Beta is impressive, it doesn’t amount to much in the financial services industry which is by its very nature global.  So 0.6% of the UK, fine, but what percentage is that of the global current account market in terms of participants?

More important, in terms of trade volume, £800m in a month might sound as if it is worth taking seriously, but that is only just over £26m a day, and compares with *daily* global financial flows of USD 5 TRILLION each day.

Fintech does have huge promise, but also huge dangers – as recognised by the Chinese and Korean governments last week.

As always, what we need is not just enthusiasm and hype, which are of course good things to have.  But we also need rationality, proportionality, and perspective.