"The FinTech lab has proven to be a significant program for engagement between entrepreneurial technology companies and New York's financial industry," said James D. Robinson III, General Partner and Co-founder of RRE Ventures.
In New York City alone, fintech investment overall has increased from 216 million dollars in 2010 to 2.4 billion dollars in 2016.
"Big new frontiers are only just beginning to opening up in fintech - from AI, block chain and robotics to biometrics, augmented reality and cybersecurity," Lumb said.
Among all the fintech innovations, the prospect of the block chain has the highest expectation.
"The block chain will change the way people store information, which is real, spreading fast and cross-border, and its 'de-centric' feature will allow everyone to know what other people are doing. The application of block chain in finance will once again bring about a revolutionary impact on the industry, just like AI does," said Huang.
FINTECH IN CHINA
Although it is hard to tell which country is leading the fintech innovations, many experts agree that China has outperformed other countries in fintech services adoption.
"The work in China has been dramatically ahead of anywhere else in the world," said Jim Bruene, founder of Finovate conferences, which showcase cutting-edge banking and financial technology.
With more intelligent, in-context financial services, especially commerce activities built around social media applications, "China is likely five or six years ahead of the United States," Bruene told Xinhua.
The latest report by Ernst & Young showed that China's fintech adoption rate came at 69 percent in an index that measures users' activity in various areas, including money transfer, payments, investments, borrowing and insurance, the highest among 20 major markets globally.
Wechat Pay, the e-payment platform built inside the 900-million-user Chinese social media application Wechat, is seen as the future of fintech services by many experts.
"Messaging is the next web browser, fintech and all other applications are going to live in a mobile messaging application like Wechat, just like how they lived in web browsers," said Greg Ratner, co-founder and chief technology officer of Troops, a U.S. artificial intelligence startup.
"It is going to be the future and is already happening in China. And I think it will come to the United States in the next five years," Ratner told Xinhua.
According to Huang's observation, there is a major difference between China and the United States in fintech development model.
"In the U.S., banks are the main driver of fintech innovations, while in China, BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) representing the enterprises contribute most to the fintech development," Huang said.
"Considering the scale of banks in China, they should play a more important role in fintech innovations," he suggested.
