This month, my team joined some of the biggest influencers in fintech at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas. It was invigorating to meet with innovative companies to hear what’s next and the pain points they’re trying to solve for businesses and consumers.

The Synchrony Ventures team looks for technologies and teams to help the company better serve our customers while accelerating our pace of innovation. With the power of Synchrony’s ecosystem — including 400,000 merchants and 65 million customers — we enable startups to scale and co-create new products and services, with the goal of reshaping the future of financial services.

Below are a few themes that stand out for me as we work to meet the needs of tomorrow’s consumer expectations:

Post-Pandemic Consumers

Over the past few years, retailers had to adjust to a new consumer landscape. During the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers emphasized the online shopping experience but also offered curbside pickup, extended return windows, and tap-to-pay checkout.

Customer demands have evolved to expect convenience and connection at all stages of the shopping and payments process. They want digital wallets and online and social media shopping with seamless embedded finance. And, no matter what channel a customer is in, they want a smooth customer journey. The technology behind the scenes is key to merge the digital and physical worlds that we live and consume in today.

Partnerships are Paramount

So how do we build and implement the technology that enables the digital and physical worlds to come together? In many cases, the answer is partnerships with fintechs and incumbents.

An amazing customer experience is seamless whether online, in store, or on-the-go. Synchrony invested in a technology called Skipify, a fintech company that enables merchants to offer a seamless, elevated checkout that sits on top of their current payment stack. Skipify’s Connected Wallet is a next-gen digital wallet that connects merchants, shoppers, and financial institutions into the moment of purchase. The brilliance of Skipify is that the company recognized that texts, ads, and emails could be a platform for commerce, reducing friction in the process, which we all know is a barrier for sales. Synchrony’s partnership with Skipify brings a better checkout experience across websites, apps, in-stores, and in your marketing channels— all feeling like a native experience without having to switch sites or load new URLs. Then, payment, billing, and shipping information are all automatically entered for shoppers -no typing required to check out, making it as easy as possible to complete a purchase.

Another partnership resulting in a seamless and streamlined customer experience is Synchrony’s partnership with Prove to streamline the credit application experience. Synchrony leverages Prove’s Pre-Fill and Identity solutions to dramatically simplify its customer application and account opening processes by reducing the number of fields a customer must complete by 80% compared to previous application processes. With Prove’s identity verification and cryptographic authentication capabilities, Synchrony applicants can quickly verify their identities, and can have credit applications approved almost instantaneously, resulting in a uniquely improved customer experience.

Shift in Fintech Strategy

From my point of view, I’ve already seen a shift in fintech strategy working to make more partnerships happen. The traditional IPO exit route isn’t working for everyone these days. Companies are realizing the value of commercial partnerships to drive reach and scale, closely collaborating with incumbents to reach the next stage of growth.

Fintechs have also learned to build their products and technology in ways that are easy to integrate and embed with incumbents or with other fintechs. When Synchrony Ventures looks at investments and partnerships, we find it’s important to bring in product teams from the start to make sure the product would integrate with our entire business flow and needs. We go beyond check writing, offering the company’s scale and expertise, including end user experience, sales and talent strategies.

Looking Forward

Thinking of how the digital and physical worlds will continue to intertwine, it’s fun to imagine shopping in virtual worlds like the metaverse and browsing a 3D, digital store that’s filled with hyper-accurate digital images of furniture. Shoppers could be able to move around the virtual store, choosing pieces rendered in incredible detail, including the grain on wood pieces and the texture of fabrics – with pricing and financing solutions guiding choices. Only then would they move to in-store where they could touch, feel, and sit on actual furniture and seamlessly execute the order with pre-approved financing.

An ecosystem of partnerships is the reality of the way we’ll need to work to deliver on the consumer expectations of tomorrow. Incumbents and fintechs must co-exist and find the right approaches to partnering to create this connected and convenient world for consumers.