After Argentina lifted FIFA’s greatest prize this month, World Cup fever continues to rage in the fintech industry. Financial technology service provider Robocash Group lays out how the Qatar World Cup would have progressed if it was based on fintech instead of football.
Robocash Group analysed the level of fintech development across all of the countries that took part in the FIFA 2022 World Cup. Each of the countries were compared across four main areas of fintech development:
- The potential of the fintech audience: Data on the median age of each country
- Digital inclusion: Daily time spent using the internet (among 16-64-year-old internet users)
- Consumer fintech penetration: The volume of digital payments (made or received in the past year)
- Penetration of the fintech offer: Quantitative and qualitative assessments of the fintech industry using an integrated indicator from ‘The Global Fintech Index Ecosystem Ranking 2021‘
All of the values were standardised and put on a 100-point scale. Finally, Robocash combined the total scores for each area and combined them for a final total.
Which countries have the strongest fintech development?
One of the strongest countries championing the fintech sector was the United States. Taking all of the factors into consideration, the USA emerged with a final score of 585.8.
Had Belgium and Canada’s fintech performance translated the real game, it would have been extremely close. With Belgium’s fintech score of 459.7 and Canada’s 460.2, a differential of 0.5 proved key for Canada’s progress in the faux tournament. Canada’s score also meant its beat Switzerland’s totals.
Robocash Group’s analysis of the tournament participants assigned both England and Wales were assigned the same score as representatives of the UK. Because of the real-life tournament group stage containing both countries, both had to be compared. Eventually, Robocash gave the win to England, in part thanks to the UK’s fintech capital, London.
The UK was also given the second-highest score for its fintech development, with high totals in all categories. Overall, the UK had one of the highest percentiles for the volume of digital payments people made or received.
Knockout tournament format aside, the top 5 ranked teams by Robocash were as follows:
- USA
- England/ Wales (UK)
- Australia
- Canada
- Belgium
Australia’s position and score comes thanks to three top-scoring areas. After analysis, Australia had the highest adult income, helping to give it a high score. It also had close to 100 per cent penetration of digital payments. Meanwhile, 90 per cent of people in the region were found to use online financial services.
