Why Visa and Mastercard have yet to face their Kodak moment

THERE are now 332 fintech unicorns in the world, according to a new ranking by small business portal Fintech Labs.

Equally striking is the dominance within the financial technology realm of billion-dollar companies that deal in some way with payments. They account for eight of Fintech Labs’ top 10 — PayPal, Ant, Stripe, Shopify, Adyen, Block (formerly Square), Checkout.com and Afterpay.

The big driver of this boom has been the steady decline of cash in all major economies of the world and the concomitant acceleration of digital payments. According to data provider Merchant Machine, the most digitalised economies, including Sweden, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Denmark, now conduct only 1 per cent of payments in cash.