What Does Finance Need? Good Design

We spoke to attendees at Money 20/20 to ask them their views on payment trends, predictions for the coming year and what the ideal payments ecosystem looks like.

Here’s an excerpt from our interaction with Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood, which is a free stock trading app.

PYMNTSWhat are some trends that the payments industry in particular has faced throughout 2015?

BB: The biggest trend that we have seen is that design is important for financial products. Not only do they have to look nice, but they also have to work well and how they work has to be well thought out. Two and half years ago, it didn’t matter at all but I have seen 25 different apps that are focusing on design and finance.

PYMNTS: What about predictions in 2016?

BB: International expansion will be a definitive trend. As a true financial company, being international is really hard because regulation makes it tricky. There are a lot of new financial technology companies that have popped out in the U.S. which were started by people who know they can scale using the Internet.

PYMNTS: WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING IN THE IMMEDIATE AND DISTANT FUTURE IN RETAIL?

BB: We’d like to have a payment system that’s immediate and ubiquitous and only allows reversals in cases where something mischievous is happening, and that’s not present today.

Baiju Bhatt co-founded Robinhood with his Stanford roommate, Vladimir Tenev, in 2012.