Fintech is a thousands-year-old invention dressed up like it just dropped out of a startup accelerator.
Before it became a pitch deck buzzword crammed between “AI-powered” and “blockchain-enabled,” fintech was clay tablets in Sumeria, used to track who owed who a sack of grain. That was 3,000 BCE. So no, your new app that lets people split dinner bills with a swipe isn’t exactly revolutionary.
It’s cute, though.
The First Financial Technology? Writing.
Before credit cards, wire transfers, or Apple Pay… there was debt.
And the first way we recorded debt? Cuneiform, literal scratches in mud tablets. You’d lend someone barley, write it down, and boom: financial tech. No codebase, no servers, just baked dirt and accountability.
Temples acted as banks. Trade records were public. Trust was etched in stone … literally.
Fast-forward a few centuries and the Venetians were double-booking ledgers while merchants across the Silk Road invented bills of exchange.
Fintech? Already booming.
VCs? Still unborn.
Fintech Before It Was Cool
- 1860s: Telegraph-based money transfer.
- 1950s: Credit cards go mainstream.
- 1967: The ATM shows up, no more awkward bank tellers.
- 1990s: Online banking.
- 2000s: PayPal and the dotcom money flood.
- 2010s: Suddenly, everything is “fintech.”
Each step made money faster, safer, and, theoretically, more accessible. But somewhere around 2014, the term “fintech” became a religion, and every coder with a hoodie and a banking grudge became a prophet.
What Is Fintech, Actually?
Forget the buzz. Here’s what it really means:
Fintech is any technology that moves, manages, or multiplies money.
No magic. No mystery. Just tools for finance.
Real-world fintech includes:
- Digital wallets
- Online lending platforms
- Insurtech
- Robo-advisors
- Crypto rails (yes, even Doge)
- Payment gateways
- Wealth apps
- APIs that silently power banks behind the scenes
But for every slick fintech UI, there’s a spaghetti mess of human effort behind the curtain.
Which brings us to Steve.
Meet Steve: The Guy Behind the Curtain
Picture this:
A startup founder is on stage at a fintech conference, pitching their new platform. Giant LED screen behind them. Big words flying out their mouth:
“We’re decentralizing finance with proprietary AI, real-time quantum risk modeling, and zero-fee cross-border settlements!”
The crowd claps. Investors nod. VCs open their wallets.
Backstage?
Steve.
Sweating bullets in a janitor closet turned server room, manually resetting a payment gateway that just crashed mid-demo.
He’s got one hand on an overheating router, the other juggling error logs and Stripe dashboards. There’s a whiteboard next to him with scribbled notes: “RESTART BEFORE PITCH.”
A Post-it stuck to his laptop reads: “Don’t pull the plug. BATTERY’s DEAD.”
He sips instant coffee, sighs, and mutters:
“Fintech, my a$$…”
Because for all the sleek front-end sizzle, most fintech is barely held together backstage by humans like Steve, overworked, under-resourced, and cleaning up after innovation.
Automation? If Steve doesn’t blink.
Disruption? Until the Wi-Fi cuts out.
The Great Fintech Illusion
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most fintech products are just interface wrappers on old financial plumbing. The core? Still ancient. Still slow. Still Steve.
Yes, some platforms genuinely improve access and cut inefficiencies. But a huge chunk are:
- Repackaged banking services
- High-interest lending with a prettier dashboard
- “Crypto” apps that behave exactly like centralized banks
- BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) schemes on steroids
- Customer service run by underpaid agents in spreadsheets
Innovation? Sometimes.
Marketing? Always.
Is Fintech a Scam?
No. But also… yes, kind of.
Fintech is a mirror: it reflects whatever the system already was … just faster and shinier.
If you feed it garbage incentives, it’ll give you garbage outcomes at scale.
But in the hands of ethical builders? It can unlock freedom, access, and opportunity for billions.
The problem isn’t the tech.
It’s not the pen.
It’s who’s holding it, and what story they’re writing.