Barclays recently invested in Beacon Platform’s Series A funding round. Beacon Platform has created a financial analytics, and integrated data platform BCS has become an investor in multiple startups that are creating technologies that it can use for various business units.
Most of their recent investments were made during the late stages of development. Although their most recent development of Beacon Platform was on its early, Series A stage. Due to these investments, we can see how this company has made some plans for its future within the fintech industry.
What is Beacon Platform?
Beacon Platform is a New York-based startup that was founded in 2014. The platform helped developers to test and run their codes, access elastic computer, complete analytics in their production, and create and deploy applications while meeting the strict requirements of large financial institutions.
Beacon Platform’s main offering include:
- Beacon Standard: Implements financial engineering logic
- Beacon App Store: Modules made for risk management and trading
- Beacon Core: Helps with streamlining technology stacks.
With its increased pace of investments in technology startups, BCS seems to realize that they need to use a more energized development process as financial services as the industry faces increased competition from all aspects.
Through investments in fintech development firms like Beacon, Barclays aims to get early access to modern fintech industry tools so that it can create software solutions at a faster pace.
Fintechs, Challengers, and Neo Banks
Non-banking challengers aren’t new to the fintech world. Neobanks, finance-related tech giants (Google, Apple, etc.), and specified startups have been in operation for years now, but only a few of them were able to obtain a significant user base in the West.
At the same time, banks such as Kakao, Timo, or DBS, and additional non-banking players such as Alibaba or WhatsApp made a SEAsian Fintech Model.
There is a multitude of reasons behind the fast improvements of the fintech development in SEA (South East Asia): there are large underserved markets, high penetration of the usage and ratio of smartphones, quick adoption of e-commerce, and remote location.
The interesting part about this region is the strong commercialization of the fintech industry. This is where non-banking players – using their large user base, can connect a series of relevant financial services and products to the offer.
For Alibaba and Tencent, merchant and p2p payments was a huge step, to begin with. In 2018, most Asian tech giants will build alternative financial ventures to combat the existing players and become the main financial provider for their customers.
We expect to see the uptakes in Africa and South America. Not only via terms of volume and pace, but its methods will be alike: basic financial services already delivered in those regions and e-commerce.
Conclusion
When it comes to Barclay’s newest investment, we can already see how it affects the fintech industry. Not only does it allow developers to create high-quality apps, but now they are helping newer startups bring their ideas to life. Because of this, there will be a lot more fintech development apps that will benefit the industry in the future.
Sources:
- https://seekingalpha.com/article/4205127-barclays-invests-beacon-platform-fintech-developer-platform?page=3
- https://medium.com/finastralabs/beyond-the-hype-the-ultimate-2018-fintech-guide-944d741a541e
- https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/15/fintech-developers-technology-apple-microsoft-xerox-kodak-revolution.html
