It takes more than just one crystal ball to discern which trends will drive fintech innovation in 2017. To this end, here’s a roundup of predictions and prognostications on what the new year will bring in everything from artificial intelligence and the blockchain to payments and banking for the underbanked.

• Banking ‘Disappears’ and Other Fintech Predictions for ’17 – American Banker
  • Hot Take: “Whether it’s through IoT devices, fintech platforms, virtual assistants or chatbots, people will likely spend more time connecting to their money through such channels and less time directly interacting with their banks.”

• 3 Key Fintech Predictions for 2017 – Banking.com
  • Hot Take: “As much as 80 percent of the (African) continent is unbanked and up to 90 percent of retail payments are made using cash. This opens the door for fintech players to target consumers and workers who do not have access to traditional banking. Because of this banking gap, it is likely that some countries will entirely skip one generation of payment types (e.g. cards and start building a more innovative, mobile-drive(n) payments infrastructure.”

• 11 Fintech Trends You Need to Follow – The Finanser
  • Hot Take: “According to EY, China has now taken the lead as the #1 fintech market in the world. Organizations should be looking east for business model innovations that can drive new revenues and sources of profit. New business models, such as Ant Financial and WeBank services, will start influencing fintech in the U.S. and Europe, as they are driven by mobile money services.”

• Top 10 Fintech Predictions for 2017 – Daily Fintech
  • Hot Take: “Bitcoin moves from its Darknet phase (illegal) to the early adopter Clearnet phase. This is when legitimate people charge in Bitcoin for legal transactions. This will start with cross border digital products. Because this brings new bitcoins into ‘circulation’ with owners who also then want to pay in bitcoin, this starts a sustainable move to mainstream use which supports the price.”

• Five fintech trends for 2017 – bobsguide
  • Hot Take: “Innovation in artificial intelligence is set to increase in 2017. AI will provide business users with access to powerful insights before they are available to them. This will be done through the use of cognitive interfaces in complex systems, advanced analytics, and machine learning technology.”

• Top Ten Fintech Predictions for 2017 – Crowdfund Insider
  • Hot Take: “The rebirth of trust is upon us with the advent of distributed ledger. Many issues such as fraud, verification of true ownership, clearance of multi-party transactions and chain-of-events are easily solvable. Insiders have been calling the distributed database, ‘The New Internet.'”

• Fintech Predictions for 2017 – TechCrunch
  • Hot Take: “2016 brought rocky times for some FinTech lenders, especially in the first half of the year, but through the tumult came maturity. The complexity and challenges of running capital intensive businesses in a highly regulated industry was never more real than 2016, but the top platform weathered the storm, and most are long-term stronger for it. 2017 will continue to be the year where the top players pull away from the pack. At the beginning of 2016, there were an estimated 400+ fintech lenders in the U.S. – in 2017, I expected the supermajority of the lending to come from just 10 or so platforms.”

Fintech 2017 – The Roundtables

• Fintech: What’s Next? – Breaking Banks
  • Brett King, Moven (F16); Chris Skinner, The Finanser; Jim Marous, The Financial Brand; Dave Birch, Consult Hyperion; Ghela Boscovich, FemTech Leaders; and Penny Crosman, American Banker

• What Industry Players Really Expect from 2017 – PYMNTS.com
  • Richard Gilbert, Payoneer (F13, FD16); Andy Brown, NCR (F16); Chris Kinship, FTV Capital, Drew Edwards, Ingo Money

• Fintech Predictions for 2017 – Fintech Insider
  • David M. Brear, 11FS; Chris Skinner; Jason Bates, 11FS; Simon Taylor, 11FS; David Birch; Ben Brabyn, Level3

• 4 Industry Experts Weigh In on Fintech Predictions for 2017 – Let’s Talk Payments
  • Nigel Savory, Bottomline Technologies; Christopher Kong, Icon Solutions; Mike Massaro, Flywire; Jim Perry, Paragon

• Top 10 Retail Banking Trends and Predictions for 2017 – The Financial Brand
  • Last, but not least, this 90+ page report features insights from a panel of more than 100 global financial service leaders from around the world. Includes Don Bergal, Avoka (F16, FD16); Mike Carter, D3 Banking (F15); Scarlett Sieber, Shamir Karkal, Teppo Paavola, Maria Jose Jorda Garcia, BBVA (F13, FD16); Jon Ogden, MX (F16, FD16); Frank Schwab, Sberbank (F16); Sophie Guibaud, Fidor (F11, FD16); Matthew Wilcox and Deva Annamalai, Fiserv (F16); Bob Legters, FIS (F16); John Waupsh; Kasasa (as BancVue F09); Jelmer de Jong, Backbase (F16).

“F” refers to the company’s most recent Finovate conference appearance. “FD” refers to the company’s most recent presentation at our developer’s conference, FinDEVr. Find out more about our upcoming events FinovateEurope in February and FinDEVR New York in March.