At the recent MVNO Nation Live congress held in Valencia, our director Santiago Gómez moderated an interview about the relationship between the new proposals of FinTech companies and virtual mobile operators.
FinTechs, technology companies that offer financial services, are experiencing exponential growth in recent years. This trend is due to the growing demand for digital financial services and the proliferation of mobile devices.
Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) are an attractive option for FinTechs, as they allow them to reach a wider audience and offer services beyond political borders.
In this context, Elon Musk has announced that his X app will become the center of users’ financial world, managing anything related to money. Musk wants to create a super-app in the style of WeChat, a Chinese multipurpose app that offers messaging, social media, online payment, and games, among others.
This goal of Musk is not new, since in 1999 he founded an online bank in the United States together with Harris Fricker, Christopher Payne, and Ed Ho.
WeChat Pay, a mobile payment service from WeChat, was launched in 2013 and is available in China, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. However, Standard Bank announced in 2020 that it would close WeChat Wallet in South Africa after several years of operation.
Such is the reach of these applications that companies such as El Corte Inglés, the main Spanish distribution group and chain of stores, launched WeChat Pay as a payment method in its centers in 2019.
In the next technological congresses, such as MWC 2024 and MVNO Nation Live 2024, we will continue to see a greater focus on FinTechs, super apps, decentralized technologies (Web3), etc. All of these trends are clearly linked to users’ mobile devices and the mobile services on which they depend to access their services.