If you've been reading our blog posts on fintech and found yourself confused by some of the terms, buzzwords and acronyms, don’t worry! To help you navigate around the fast-changing world of modern finance, we've compiled a fintech glossary with definitions and useful links. Please feel free to bookmark this page for future reference.

A

Altcoin: cryptocurrencies that are an alternative to Bitcoin and Ether. Many altcoins try to position themselves as better alternatives to BTC, for example, in being more efficient or less expensive.  

Alternative Finance (Alt-Fi): financial products, instruments, and tools that have been developed outside of the traditional financial system, for example, peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding, BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) payment plans, and merchant cash advances.

Alternative lending: a variety of lending options outside traditional bank loans. These lending instruments tend to have more flexible repayment terms, approval processes and credit history requirements but could have higher interest rates. Alternative lending may be used by startups, scales ups and established businesses as a complement to their existing bank funding or instead of it. 

AML (Anti-Money Laundering):  a set of procedures, laws or regulations that aims to prevent or stop the practice of generating income through illegal actions. Money laundering is a type of financial crime that takes criminally obtained proceeds (‘dirty money) and disguises their origins.

Angel investor: an affluent individual who provides funding for a business. This is usually done in exchange for a stake in the business. The most common forms of angel investing are equity and convertible loans. 

API Banking: a set of protocols that enables access to banking services provided by a financial institution. API allows banks to provide secure and restricted access to their systems for third parties to carry out certain operations and functions.

Application programming interface (API): a set of routines, procedures and tools that allow multiple systems or applications to interact with each other. This enables accessing data or features of an operating system or another application and allows customisation of applications.

Artificial intelligence (AI): a diverse field of computer science that develops smart machines capable of tasks that typically need human intelligence.

Automated Clearing House (ACH): an electronic network that coordinates electronic payments and automated money transfers. It makes it possible to move funds between financial institutions without using wire transfers, card networks, checks or cash.

B

BaaS (Banking-as-a-Service): provision of complete banking functionality that enables third parties to easily embed financial services into their products and services without the need to build banking infrastructure or obtain banking licences..

Banking licence: legal permission from regulatory authorities to establish a bank. To obtain a banking licence, various requirements have to be fulfilled across governance, capitalisation, and operational setup. These requirements vary to some extent across jurisdictions. A banking licence proves that a bank has met all the legal requirements to protect its customers' money and data. 

Big Data: extremely large sets of structured and unstructured data that can be analysed to reveal trends and patterns and generate insights. These sets are often too big or complex to be processed by traditional applications. Fintechs and financial services providers mine Big Data to better understand their customers’ behaviour. Examples of Big Data usage are in fraud prevention and detection, optimisation of customer experience and predicting future customer behaviour. 

Biometrics: a set of digital security methods that use biological or physiological attributes to prevent data breaches, for example, payment card hacks or unauthorised logins. Biometrics uses an individual’s physically unique properties, such as fingerprints or voice patterns, to prove their identity. Biometrics allows to the reduction of reliance on passwords or PIN codes that can be more easily compromised.

Bitcoin (BTC): the original digital currency created by an anonymous computer programmer under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Bitcoin is a digital asset that can be freely traded across a number of crypto exchanges and investment platforms and sent peer-to-peer without intermediaries.

Blockchain: a shared, secure and immutable digital record of transactions. Each block includes data on an individual transaction, in particular, date, time, and amount. It is designed in such a way that it is difficult to amend.  Individual blocks link together into a chain, therefore, ‘a blockchain’. Blockchains are used in a number of applications, most prominently, as a foundation for cryptocurrencies. 

Brand strategy: a holistic approach to how a brand builds recognition and favorability with customers and prospective customers. Its elements include brand identity, brand values, brand voice, storytelling and the overall vibe.

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL): an alternative financing instrument that has become very popular due to its flexibility, speed of approval, low or no interest, and no impact on credit rating, if a BNPL loan is repaid on time.

C

CFT/CTF: combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) or counter-terrorist financing (CTF) policies are used by many countries as a means to prevent, trace and recover assets that are the proceeds of crime, and to disrupt and dismantle global terrorist financial and criminal laundering operations. CFT/CTF is often connected with AML (Anti-Money Laundering) when dealing with compliance issues. 

Challenger bank: a smaller bank set up to compete for business with larger, more traditional banks. Challenger banks are often fully digital and have no physical branches. These banks drive innovation, and improvement in the overall customer experience including personalisation, and are powered by new business and operational models. In the UK, the most well-known challenger banks are Monzon, Revolut and Starling Bank. 

Competitive benchmarking: a method of establishing comparison and benchmarking for a company’s performance. It involves researching industry leaders’ and competitors’ strategies, processes and products and services. Competitive benchmarking helps maintain a competitive edge and prevents loss of market share. 

Content marketing: a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing high-value relevant content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, and ultimately to convert it into customers. Instead of purely pitching its products or services, a company would provide relevant and useful content to its prospects and customers to help them solve their issues, thus driving inbound interest in its products. 

Corporate finance: investment decisions, determining capital structures and sourcing of funding for companies. One of the main objectives is to maximise shareholder value through short and long-term strategic financial planning.

Crowdfunding: a method of raising funding for a venture or a project, where typically a large number of people contribute a relatively small amount. At present most of the crowdfunding is done via internet crowdfunding platforms. 

Crypto assets: digital assets that are recorded on a distributed ledger, for example, on a blockchain.

Cryptocurrency: a digital currency that was created using encryption algorithms. Cryptocurrencies can function both as a currency (a form of payment), and a virtual accounting system. Cryptocurrencies are virtual, decentralised currencies, and form a part of digital assets (also known as ‘crypto assets). The value of cryptocurrencies is determined by supply and demand and is not controlled by any entities. The most well-known cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin and Ethereum. You can find out more about cryptocurrencies in our blogs. 

Customer acquisition strategy: a strategy that defines the optimal mix of marketing, media and engagement tools to attract new prospects and convert them into customers.

Customer relationship management (CRM): technology that helps businesses to manage their interactions with potential and existing customers. A CRM system enables companies to develop customer relationships and streamline processes, so they can drive sales, improve customer experience, and increase profitability.

Customer experience (Cx): the impression a company’s customers or clients have of its brand as a whole throughout all aspects of its journey. Good customer experience is vital for a company’s ability to attract, convert and maintain customers. Customer experience is increasingly viewed as part of Total Experience.

D

Data mining: the process of analysing data to uncover connections and patterns, and using this data to forecast future trends. Data mining uses machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover patterns within Big Data. 

Decentralized Finance (DeFi): an umbrella term for a range of crypto and blockchain financial applications that are geared to disrupt traditional financial intermediaries. DeFi does not rely on traditional financial institutions such as stock exchanges or banks. It expands the use of blockchain from a simple transfer of value to more complex financial use cases and instruments.

Digital asset: an asset that is created, stored and traded in a digital format. In the context of blockchain and Web 3.0, examples of digital assets include cryptocurrencies, tokens and NFTs (non-fungible tokens.

Digital finance: delivery of traditional financial services digitally, through digital channels and devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets. Digital finance is helping to make financial services accessible to unserved or underserved populations, in particular areas with no physical infrastructure for financial services.

Digital fingerprint: a form of identification, which is derived from a larger data set. Digital fingerprinting technology converts content into a compact digital asset or impression by a fingerprint algorithm. It allows owners to identify, track, monitor and monetise content across digital distribution channels. Therefore digital fingerprinting technology enables the content owners to control their copyrighted content. 

Digital identity: a person’s online version of their physical identity, compiled based on their online activity. It includes various data elements, including usernames, search history, purchasing behaviours etc.

Digital native: a person who has grown up in the age of digital technology. This digital native demographic is vital to the growth of FinTech, as they are more likely to use their banking services online or on their smartphones. 

Digital transformation: adoption of digital technologies to develop new or improve existing products and services, business processes, culture and customer and employee experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. 

Digital transformation framework: a tool, used by digital transformation consultants and business leaders, to analyse a business in order to enable its repositioning within the digital economy. The four main areas of digital transformation are business model transformation, process transformation, domain transformation and culture transformation. 

Digital transformation roadmap: a structured process that explains how a company can implement digital technology to achieve its business goals, and future-proof and grow its operations in a sustainable way.

Digital wallet: a software application or an online payment tool that is an electronic version of a physical wallet. It stores a user’s payment information on an electronic device. In addition, it can also house electronic versions of other documents such as driver’s licences, store cards, and loyalty cards.

Disruptive innovation: a new development that is often enabled by technological progress, which dramatically changes the way an industry functions. Examples of disruptive innovation in finance include the invention of the internet, the emergence of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT): replicating, synchronising and sharing transactions in their digital ledgers through the use of nodes (computers that are spread out geographically) to replicate, share and synchronise transactions in their digital ledgers. The data is not stored centrally, and there is no centralised administrator of the data. Blockchain is the best well-known type of distributed ledger.

E

Ecommerce finance: financing instruments for online businesses to cover their cash flow needs and fund their growth. Ecommerce finance includes overdrafts, revolving credit facilities, invoice factoring, merchant cash advances and short-term business loans. 

Electronic Identity Verification (eIDV): using public and private electronic databases to determine if an individual is who they claim to be. Electronic Identity Verification is widely used to minimise fraud.

ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance): criteria for assessing the environmental and ethical impact of a business. ESG increasingly forms part of company reporting and investment analysis, and ESG data analytics companies are often considered part of the FinTech universe.  

Ether (ETH): the native cryptocurrency for the Ethereum blockchain network. It tracks and facilitates all transactions in the network.

Ethereum: a decentralised software platform that allows smart contracts and distributed applications to be built and run without any downtime, fraud, control or interference from a third party. The Ethereum platform is also the basis for Ether, its virtual currency. Ethereum is also a programming language that runs on a blockchain and enables developers to create distributed applications.

F

Fiat currency: ‘traditional’ currencies, which are government-issued and are not backed by commodities, for example, gold.

Finance automation: use of technology to automate key finance functions such as financial analysis, payroll administration, invoice automation, bookkeeping and preparing financial statements, expense management, bank transaction reconciliation  - with no or minimal human intervention. A wide range of technologies such as blockchain, Artificial intelligence (AI), and Optical character recognition (OCR) is being used in finance automation and digitalisation. 

Financial innovation: the process of creating new financial and investment products, services, processes and business models, enabled by the application of new technology. Some examples of recent financial innovations are the creation of neobanks, crowdfunding and the emergence of digital assets.

FinTech (Financial Technology): the emerging sector that is applying technology (both hardware and software) to improve, automate and modernise financial services to consumers and businesses. 

FinTech consulting: consulting services that help FinTech startups and scaleups create and implement scalable growth strategies including growing revenues, customer volumes and scaling technological foundation, operational processes and HR. 

FinTech ecosystem: an ecosystem that supports innovation in finance. It includes FinTech startups and scale-ups, financial services companies and governments and regulatory authorities. The biggest FinTech ecosystems include Silicon Valley, London, New York, Singapore and Los Angeles.

FinTech marketing: a sum of marketing techniques tailored for financial technology companies. FinTech companies use new technologies to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services to customers.

FinTech sandbox: access to regulatory expertise and a set of tools to enable testing of innovative FinTech propositions and business models in the market with real customers.  The sandbox environment allows businesses to test their new offering before obtaining a full licence. 

Fractional CMO: a part-time Chief Marketing Officer; an experienced senior marketing expert who works with a business on a part-time, or ‘fractional’ basis, with a focus on growth and marketing strategy development and implementation of marketing strategy. This also includes managing, growing, and mentoring the company's marketing team and developing its growth sales & marketing engine. Using a Fractional CMO is a cost-efficient way of attracting top marketing talent and building marketing operations for fintech startups and scale-ups.

Fractional CRO: a part-time Chief Revenue Officer; an experienced senior sales, marketing and customer success expert who works with a business on a part-time, or ‘fractional’ basis, to develop and implement revenue growth strategies that align people, technology, and data. This also includes managing, growing, and mentoring the company's sales & marketing team and developing its growth sales & marketing engine. Using a Fractional CRO is a cost-efficient way of attracting top marketing talent and building marketing operations for fintech startups and scale-ups.

Freemium: ‘Free’ plus ‘premium’, a business model that combines offering a limited version of a product or service for free, with access to additional, value-add, features for a fee.

G

Gazelle company: a fast-growing business, whose revenues have been increasing annually by >20% for at least four years, starting from a revenue of at least $100,000.

Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy: a Go-To-Market strategy is a plan that describes what customer segments a company will target, how it will engage with prospects to convert them into buyers, and how it will gain a competitive advantage. A GTM strategy includes such elements as customer segmentation, pricing strategies, sales and distribution channel definition, the buying journey definition, launches of new products or services, product branding or product introduction to new customer segments and geographical markets.

Growth engine (growth flywheel): a framework that interlinks strategies, tactics, and processes that enable a company to accelerate its growth. It categorises a company’s growth initiatives into four connected components: Demand Generation, Client Acquisition, Lifetime Value Optimization, and Retention & Referral.

Green Finance: any structured financial activity that has been designed to create a better environmental outcome. Green Finance includes debt and equity instruments that enable the development of green projects or help reduce the impact on the environment. 

Growth finance: a range of equity, debt and mezzanine finance and debt finance instruments available to high-growth businesses. 

Growth hacking: a sub-field of digital marketing that targets fast company growth. It involves a set of innovative, creative, and often low-cost strategies that businesses use to grow their customer base. 

Growth marketing: an iterative, data-driven method of growing revenue, increasing customer acquisition and improving retention. The main characteristic of growth marketing is experimentation, or executing a series of tests within the customer conversion funnel to gain a better understanding of user needs, preferences, intent and product-market fit. By using growth marketing, a business can maximise the value of campaigns, improve customer engagement and build long-term, profitable customer relationships. 

Growth strategy: a company’s plan to realise its expansion goals and overcome its present and future internal and external challenges. Growth strategy goals may include growing revenue and market share, buying other companies, improving its products or services and overall customer experience, and entering strategic partnerships. 

H

Hedge fund: a private investment partnership that pools funds and aims to make a return by using varied and complex proprietary strategies. Hedge funds invest or trade currencies, commodities, fixed-income instruments, shares, convertible securities, cryptocurrencies and derivative products to generate returns at reduced risk. Hedge funds usually operate as limited partnerships or as limited liability companies. 

I

ICO: an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a form of fundraising in the cryptocurrency space. Projects or companies or projects offer cryptocurrencies (‘coins’, ‘tokens’) to investors in exchange for money, with the hope that these will appreciate in future. 

Inorganic growth: growth within a business created via acquiring or merging with other companies. It is often a way to accelerate overall growth, and is faster than organic growth, where the main focus is on customer acquisition, increasing efficiency and reducing costs. 

Insurance technology (‘InsurTech’): technology designed to modernise insurance companies. It is disrupting the traditional insurance industry by reducing the costs for consumers and insurance companies and improving employee and customer experience. Its applications include policy underwriting, claims processing,  asset management, surveillance and monitoring of insured activities.

Internet of Things (IoT): a system of interrelated computing devices, machines, objects and gadgets that are equipped with unique identifiers (UIDs) and are able to transfer data over a network without needing human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

K

KYC (Know Your Customer): a regulated process whereby a company verifies the identity of its client or customer. The KYC process normally includes obtaining customers’ Proof of Identity (POI) and Proof of Address (POA). It is usually completed before a company starts to do business with a customer. KYC standards aim to protect financial institutions against corruption, fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing.

L

Ledger: a distributed or shared ledger; a consensus of digital data that is replicated, synchronised and shared across multiple institutions and geographical sites. Distributed ledgers do not have a central data owner or administrator, or a centralised data storage. The blockchain system is the most common example of a distributed ledger.

Lending platform: an online platform that aggregates a wide range of lenders. It makes it easy for borrowers to find a suitable finance option.  

LendTech: - technology-driven companies that help businesses and sole traders access business finance. In some cases owners of business use LendTech companies when they cannot obtain finance from traditional lenders. 

M

Machine learning: a field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that provides systems with the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience, without the need for explicit programming. Machine learning focuses on creating programs that are able to access data and use it in their learning process.

Mass payment: a method of paying a number of recipients simultaneously via an online transaction. Instead of inputting each customer’s payment details separately, a payor uploads a document containing all the relevant payment data. Alternatively, a user can utilise a mass payment API. 

Merchant aggregator: a service provider that enables merchants to receive payments without needing to set up a merchant account. Effectively, an aggregator (sometimes referred to as a payment aggregator) accepts payments on behalf of merchants.

Metaverse: the digital reality that combines the functionality of social media, e-gaming, virtual reality (VR), and digital assets including cryptocurrencies, tokens and NFTs, to allow users to interact virtually.

Micropayment: a financial transaction that involves a very small amount of money (often defined as less than £20). Micropayments normally take place online and are becoming increasingly common. 

Mining: the method by which certain digital assets, for example, Bitcoin, are created. The mining process validates and adds transactions to the blockchain. This brings new coins into circulation.

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): a security system whereby a user is required to verify their identity through at least two authentication methods. The most widespread MFA system is Two-Factor authentication, which includes a user entering a password and a code that is sent to their phone. 

MVP (Minimum Viable Product): a product with a feature set that is sufficient to attract early-adopter customers and provide validation to a product early in its product development cycle. It is a way to minimise the time and money spent developing technology before release, as it allows to gain feedback quickly and iterate the product efficiently. 

Near-field communication (NFC): a technology that enables communication between two devices when they are within close proximity to each other. Contactless payment is a good example of an NFC application. NFC is a secure method of interaction due to the need for the devices (e.g. a payment machine and a customer’s card) to be within a few centimetres distance of each other. 

Neobank: a bank that operates exclusively online and via mobile applications. Neobanks enable customers to execute traditional banking operations such as payments, money transfers, loans, opening savings accounts, without the need to visit a physical bank office. Neobanks may have their own banking licence or may operate as a digital partner of a traditional bank.

Non-Fungible Token (NFT): a certificate of authenticity and ownership for a unique digital asset, for example, a video, photograph or song. NFTs are stored on an open blockchain, such as Ethereum, and can be collected and traded on various online platforms.

O

Omnichannel customer experience: when a company advertises to, sells and provides support to prospects and customers across multiple channels, for example, social media, messaging apps and chatbots. In an omnichannel environment, It treats each interaction or touchpoint as part of a single, frictionless overall experience.

Onboarding: client onboarding is a process at the intersection of customer service and sales. Its purpose is to transition them from the sales process to be successful, informed and happy customers. Exactly what is required to onboard a customer varies, but it refers to all the steps that get customers up and running. Streamlined onboarding processes are a crucial part of the FinTech customer experience.

Online investment platforms: an investment platform (sometimes known as a fund supermarket) offers investors a place and tools to search and invest in shares and investment funds. They are web or app-based services that enable investors to buy and sell securities, view and analyse their trading history and investments and research various investment instruments.

Open Accounting: the practice of enabling businesses to grant Trusted Third-Parties (TTPs) access to the data from their accounting ledgers. Open Accounting enables providers of finance and financial intermediaries to find attractive finance options for their customers.

Open Banking (PSD2): the practice of sharing financial information securely, and in a way in which the customer approves of. This is achieved through the use of open APIs, which enable developers to build applications and services. This allows users to share data such as spending habits and payments with authorised providers such as budgeting apps, other banks and challenger banks.

Open source software: software that is publicly accessible for free, and that can be modified and shared without limitations. 

Organic growth: growth that a business achieves by raising its output and growing sales and numbers of customers, as opposed to inorganic growth, which originates from mergers & acquisitions.

P

P2P (Peer-to-peer): a decentralised platform which enables individuals to interact directly with each other, without intermediation by a third party. On a P2P platform, the buyer and the seller transact directly with each other.

P2P platform lending (Peer-to-peer platform lending): provision of loans to businesses or individuals over an online platform, whereby lenders are matched with borrowers. Running these platforms online enables them to have lower operating costs compared to traditional financial institutions.

P2P transactions (Peer-to-peer transactions): transfers of funds from one user’s bank account or credit card to another user’s bank account via the internet, often via a mobile phone. 

P2P transfer apps: Peer-to-peer transaction transfer apps enable individuals to send and receive money without friction. These apps connect directly to users’ bank accounts.

PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service): an operating model whereby an external provider supplies a company with a platform and an environment which enables them to build products and services over the internet. PaaS provides developers with tools and services needed for code to be deployed efficiently. They are designed to provide a cost-efficient alternative to developing and maintaining their own platform.

Passwordless authentication: a form of verification which allows a user to access an application or a website without entering a password. Instead, the login is done via a token delivered by text or email, fingerprint, or a magic link. This reduces the risk of a user using the same password for multiple applications, thus compromising their security. 

Payment gateway: a service or an application that prevents and identifies fraud for a business. It transmits payment information securely from an application or a website to the payment network for authentication and processing and returns the response to the website.

Payment service provider (PSP): a third party that enables merchants to accept electronic payments, thus providing connectivity to financial service companies and credit card acquirers.

PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance: a combination of security standards created to protect card information during and after financial transactions. All card issuers have to comply with these standards, and many FinTech companies are becoming PCI compliant in order to demonstrate a certain security standard.

Private equity: an alternative type of financing, whereby a private equity firm raises money from investors to invest money directly in a company or by funding its buyout. There are different types of private equity, including. There are three main types of private equity strategies: venture capital, growth equity and buyouts.

Proof of Concept (POC): a prototype designed to show that a hypothesis or a concept is viable, and therefore there is a potential for developing a feasible real-world application. 

PropTech (Property Technology): application of technology to modernise the real estate industry. Its segments include asset utilisation, construction, maintenance and renovation, property management, transaction solutions and finance and investments. 

Q

Qualified lead: a lead that has gone through the qualification process performed by either a sales/marketing professional or a software application. Qualified leads progress through a company’s conversion funnel to become customers. 

R

Real-time lending: the ability of a bank or a lender to receive a customer’s application, assess its risk and immediately make a decision on whether to approve or reject the loan. 

Recurring revenue model: a revenue model that relies on regular and repeats payments from customers for accessing products and services. This model is very popular in FinTech and attractive to investors; its examples include SaaS subscriptions or memberships. In this model, customers are retained automatically, and their relationship with a company is deeper than in the case of a one-off transaction. Revenue growth is measured as a change to monthly recurring revenue (MRR) or annual recurring revenue (ARR). 

RegTech (Regulatory Technology): application of technology to enhance regulatory processes within the financial services sector. The main segments of RegTech include compliance, reporting and regulatory monitoring. RegTech companies apply cloud computing technology to help businesses comply with financial regulations in a more effective and cost-efficient way.

Revenue growth management: a set of strategies and tactics aimed at driving sustainable and profitable growth from a company’s consumer base.

Revenue model: a part of the business model that dictates how a business charges its customers for its products and services. Most popular revenue models in fintech include subscriptions/fees, advertising and data monetisation.

Robo advisor: an emerging class of financial advisors that provide financial advice and/or investment management to customers, using algorithms and software tools. In most cases, these robo-advisors require limited or no human intervention to manage investment portfolios and perform tax optimisation. Robo advisors may be standalone companies and platforms, or in-house applications of incumbent financial services companies.

S

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service): a cloud-based technology that delivers to customers an application which is developed, owned and hosted by an external party. SaaS applications are normally provided on a subscription basis (as a software licence) and do not need to be installed on users’ devices. 

SaaS revenue model: the software as a service (SaaS) revenue model is based on regular, ongoing payments by a customer over a defined time period. These fees are paid in exchange for the use of a software application or a platform. This model is very popular in FinTech and attractive to investors.In this model, customers are retained automatically, and their relationship with a company is deeper than in the case of a one-off transaction. Revenue growth is measured as a change to monthly recurring revenue (MRR) or annual recurring revenue (ARR). 

Scaleup company (a scale-up): a business that is in the process of expanding. According to the OECD, a scale-up has an average annualised return of at least 20% for its last three years. It should also have at least 10 employees at the beginning of this period.

Scaleup consulting: consulting services that help FinTech startups and scaleups create and implement scalable growth strategies including growing revenues, customer volumes and scaling technological foundation, operational processes and HR. 

Seed capital: early-stage funding for new start-up companies during its pre-product-market fit phase. Seed funding can be provided by an entrepreneur themselves, as well as private investors or seed funds in exchange for equity. 

Series A funding: the round of investment that follows seed funding. It is usually done on the basis of a product-market fit and early revenue, and is often an entry point for institutional investors. 

Series B funding: the round of investment that enables a fast-growth company to scale up its operations and expand its market reach. Generally,  Series B capital is used to grow the business by acquiring talent, processes and platforms, as well as scaling user acquisition.

Single sign-on (SSO): an authentication process that enables a user to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications. It authenticates the user for all applications to which they have been granted rights.

Smart contract: computer code stored on a blockchain-based platform, which automatically executes all or parts of an agreement when predetermined conditions are met. Generally, a smart contract runs on a decentralised ledger, for example, a blockchain, which enforces and monitors the execution of a contract.

Startup company: a new business venture established by one or more entrepreneurs to create unique and irreplaceable products or services supported by a scalable business model. 

Stablecoin: a digital asset whose value is pegged to a fiat currency, for example, to a USD, and is collateralized by cash and / or securities. Most popular stable coins include USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT) and DAI.

Startup accelerator: a program that supports early-stage startups with pre-seed or seed financing, education, networking and mentoring. These services are often provided in exchange for equity. They are normally time-limited and finish with a pitch event for investors.

SupTech (Supervisory Technology): application of technology to modernise operations of supervisory authorities. 

Sustainable growth: realistically achievable rate of growth that a business could maintain without raising additional equity or debt, or running into problems. Increasingly, sustainable growth also means growth without creating an adverse negative impact on the environment and natural resources. 

T

Token (crypto token): a unit of value that blockchain-based organisations or projects create on top of existing blockchain networks. They are a different digital asset class from cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are native assets of blockchain protocols, whereas tokens are issued by platforms that build applications on top of blockchains. 

Tokenisation: a method of replacing sensitive data with unique identification symbols, words or phrases (‘tokens’). This way all sensitive information is retained without compromising data security. Tokenisation can be used to strengthen e-commerce transaction security without having additional costs for regulation and industry compliance.

U

Unbanked: a person or a business that does not have an account at a bank. They are either paid in cash or cash their paychecks. Unbanked persons are often poor and ineligible to buy a house or take advantage of social services. FinTech is well-positioned to solve the problem of providing the unbanked population with access to financial services.

Underbanked: people or businesses who have poor access to mainstream banking or financial services offered by retail banks. FinTech is well-positioned to solve the problem of providing the underbanked population with access to financial services.

Unicorn company: a startup with a valuation of over $bn. It alludes to the rarity of a business achieving this valuation, similar to the mythological creature. 

V

VC (Venture capital): funding provided to fast-growing businesses with high potential and scalable business models. Venture capital is generally provided by venture capital funds, but can also come from other financial institutions, such as family offices and hedge funds, or corporates. Venture funding is provided in exchange for equity in the company.

Virtual card: an electronic card that provides a user with around-the-clock access to digital, contactless payments through their mobile phone.

Virtual currency: a type of unregulated digital currency, which can be used as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, or a store of value, but does not have a legal tender status as recognised by the majority of governments. It is not issued or controlled by a central bank. Examples of virtual currencies include Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ether. Virtual (or ‘digital’) currencies are stored in and transacted through designated software, apps and networks in digital form.

W

Web 3.0 (Web3): the third generation of internet and web technologies. It is anticipated that Web 3.0 will be open-source, trustless and decentralised (or ‘distributed’.

White-Label Platform: a software platform that is developed by a tech company and is offered to their clients without any branding. A client, for example, a bank or a lender, will then use their own brand under which they will offer the platform to customers. 

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