Coordinating Money Isn’t Solved.
For the last twenty years, fintech has focused on moving money.
Faster payments. Cheaper payments. Better payment experiences.
And largely, it worked.
In Australia, money can move between bank accounts in seconds through PayID, NPP and PayTo.
Yet something still feels broken.
Not the payment itself.
Everything around it.
Think about a sports club collecting membership fees.
A school parent group organizing an event.
A group trip with friends.
A shared household splitting expenses.
The workflow usually looks something like this:
- Communication in WhatsApp
- Balances in Excel
- Payments in a banking app
- Receipts in a camera roll
- Reconciliation done manually
The payment takes seconds.
The coordination takes days.
That raises an interesting question:
What if the next generation of fintech isn’t about moving money?
What if it’s about coordinating money?
Historically, fintech companies created value by owning payment rails.
Tomorrow’s winners may create value by owning the workflow around those rails.
The distinction matters.
One company competes with banks.
The other competes with spreadsheets.
Personally, I find the second opportunity more interesting.
The hardest part won’t be technology.
The hardest part will be distribution.
Most consumers tolerate inefficient workflows surprisingly well.
But club treasurers, school administrators, event organizers and community managers don’t.
They’re the ones chasing payments.
They’re the ones reconciling transactions.
They’re the ones feeling the pain every week.
If there is a company to be built here, it probably won’t look like another Venmo.
It will look more like an operating system for group money.
Because as payment infrastructure becomes commoditized, the value increasingly moves one layer higher.
The companies that win the next decade of fintech may not be the ones moving money.
They may be the ones coordinating it.