Before putting together this list, I thought ‘who cares about *our* best posts of the year’? But this lists represents what’s most popular based on unique visits – what new people visiting the blog are most interested in seeing. This list, then, paints a picture of what’s on our minds, and tracks the trends everyone in fintech is talking about. If you want to know more about what’s happening at Interac ‘behind the scenes’, this is the place to start.
New Features: Autodeposit and Request Money
This one was published relatively late in the year, so it’s kind of remarkable that it’s at the top of our list. Last year in a post on selected trends in digital payments and fintech, our VP Debbie Gamble called out the rise of “a new kind of customer”. The popularity of our request money and autodeposit post highlights who this new customer is and what they want.
If you’ve already seen this post but want more, we’re breaking down autodeposit and request money in a couple of infographics published on the blog. Check them out here.
Blockchain Comes of Age, Parts One and Two
Parts one and two of our blockchain series are right beside each other in terms of traffic and popularity (on average, these pages were viewed for longer periods of time than other pages in the developer centre). Going back to Debbie’s post on trends last year, the emergence of Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) is just one of the trends people are referring to when we in the fintech industry talk about “a new kind of ecosystem”.
It’s clear as we move into 2018 that blockchain isn’t going anywhere, and neither are the various uses and ecosystems developed out of blockchain technology.
Innovation Spotlight: Sensibill
We’re big on collaboration here, so to see our Sensibill video among top posts of the year is another reminder of how important it is for us to highlight who we work with. Sensibill adds ‘value-added services to banking applications’, and helps extract and structure receipt data so that it can be used by banks, businesses and customers.
In a post on fall trends in digital payments, Director of Product Marketing Michelle Tampoya talked about 2017 being the year that ‘newer fintech players’ and financial institutions would make the apps that we use to make payments or send money. Our work with companies like Sensibill is what we’re doing to make sure that Canadians have choices built into those apps.
Why We’re Joining the API Economy (Part 2)
If you’re wondering how a business outside of Interac actually works with us, our APIs are (read: will be) part of the answer. This goes back to another market trend highlighted by Debbie and Michelle in earlier posts: the development of APIs to meet both the demands of customers and of regulatory bodies.
In January of 2018 we will be pilot testing our first public API (literally called the e-Transfer Public API) at a hack-a-thon hosted by the University of Toronto. We’re working right now to make our FI APIs ready for the public, writing documentation and content, and making key updates to our developer centre to bring it all together. Needless to say, but we’re going to say it anyway: stay tuned.
Video: Finance after Blockchain
Earlier this year we released a documentary that explored the impact of blockchain on the finance industry. Not only was it one of the most popular videos on our blog, but in less than a year it’s been viewed by people in the US and other countries outside of Canada via other channels.
This documentary was then followed up by another video we did in partnership with Alectra and IBM. That video is here but was also in part 2 of our Blockchain Comes of Age series.
Early in 2018 we’ll share a post about the trends we’re watching for the new year. What do you think? What was a hot topic for you this year? Let us know in the comments.
Resources
Ahead of 2018 we’re continuing to monitor trends and deliver more content that highlights our new services and offerings, and our point of view on how the world of finance and technology is changing. Here’s a list of the white papers and content we’ve bookmarked to stay up-to-date on trends for the new year:
- Digital Identity: Unlocking the full potential of Canada’s digital economy (White Paper)
- Canadian Payments Innovation Forum 2017 Presentation: Speed, Security, Convenience
- Acceptance and Use of Payments at the Point of Sale in Canada (Bank of Canada Review)
- The Phoenix Rises: Remaking the Bank for An Ecosystem World (McKinsey Global Banking Annual Review 2017)
- Technology-led innovation in the Canadian financial services sector (Competition Bureau Canada Market Study)
