Post App Era: Digital Content First Approach For Financial Services

Review: Forms of User Interactable Software

‘90s—Rise of Client-Server architecture and Thick client desktop software

‘00s—Web 1.0: Browser-Server architecture with HTML/Flash Thin client entering enterprises

‘‘10s—Web 2.0 age: HTML5/JavaScript + Responsive UI Rich client taking off

’10s—The omnipresent Mini-App — mobile, lightweight, transferrable HTML/JS Rich client snippets

’17 — Now—The omnipresent Mini-App — mobile, lightweight, transferrable HTML/JS Rich client snippets

Coming—Internet of Things — calling for a new interactable content format pervasive on all devices

The Digital Age User Experience

Post Mobile App Era

Growth curve of mobile phone devices passed their peak

Native mobile app technologies have inherent limitation

Silo: each individual app is one isolated information island
Heavy: not suitable to be shared and re-distributed by users in digital networks to achieve viral effect
High development cost: enterprises need to maintain separate teams for different hardware/OS platforms (i.e. iOS/Android/Windows/Mac/Linux)
Difficult to achieve real agility — many teams merely make false claim
User experience still inherits the Web 1.0 legacy (assuming an eye-ball economy trying to occupy user screen time), does not match typical fragmented usage patterns in digital age New classes of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) technologies emerging. Business needs to serve customers via all interactive mechanisms including keyboard, mobile keypad, mouse devices, touch screens, voice dictation etc. across all hardware and OS.

Calling for new form of interactable software and new format of application content as vehicle

What is the desirable software form for the digital age?

What does it mean for FSI?

Customers in digital age want

Financial services as “utility”:

Do not ‘call’ me. I will ‘call’ you when necessary
When I call, your digital function be better like reliable electricity — on demand usage, at all time, anywhere Excellent experience via:
Trust-worthy connectivity with consumer goods and services
Easy discovery of your digital service functionality when needed Convenience:
One ‘touch’ away from redeeming points with your promotional offerings
Easy accessibility to your promotional programs with participating partners FSI need to Focus on digital content creation — content encapsulating information, data and services Let content be recommended, shared and redistributed to customers for instant consumption/use, not having them install or update a certain application software Pursue an open but secure connection strategy to connect with partners to jointly serve customers Develop a digital ecosystem to enable partner onboarding — richer eco partners, stronger competitive advantage Achieve true agility with effective risk control on releasing digital service scenarios as contents

Mini-App: Ubiquitous, Utility-driven and User-centric

Ubiquitous: accessible/available anywhere, PC/Phone/IoT
Utility-driven: for on-demand use — appear when needed, disappear when done
User-centric: surround user with scenarios, not surround App with users ## Mini-App: new software vehicle for digital age
A “new” form of user interactable software (not exactly new, considering it a reinvention of Flash or Java Applet but more open, or a PWA — Progressive Web Application but suitable to run on mobile/IoT devices), in the post mobile App era
A digital content format, consisting of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML/JSON and multimedia files organized in certain directory structure, in compressed form
A tiny, light-weight piece of code providing a smooth digital experience, without requiring users’ explicit awareness of its downloading and upgrading
Little snippet shareable across a social network among users to achieve viral effect — application scenarios that can be disseminated, moving from device to device, person to person
On-demand, per-use based instant app without on-device installation and management overhead — totally non-intrusive and transparent to users ## History of Mini-App — the WeChat Origin and Beyond
Originally invented by Tencent as “Mini Program”, running in its popular WeChat social network. Have taken China by storm since exploding in 2018 and almost omnipresent in every consumer-oriented digital service scenario
Grow an ecosystem with 5M+ mini programs over 200 categories (lifestyle services, business, shopping and education etc.) and a DAU approaching 500M (2021) or MAU of 832M ( as of September 2020) within 4 years, leapfrogging Apple App Store and Google Play easily
In 2020, more than 100 million people shop via WeChat Mini Programs. With the help of mini program pre-sale + offline self pick-up mode, more than 300 million users purchased fresh fruits and vegetables, for example Other Chinese Internet giants quick to follow suit, rolling out their own flavors of instant App technologies
In the Chinese digital landscape, more and more developers are building and deploying applications on these platforms as alternatives to the mobile App Stores ## Success of Internet giants and enlightenment to financial institutions

Can financial industry do the same?

As a firm in the banking/insurance/capital market industry, can I achieve time-to-market with high agility and scalability while balancing compliance and risk control?
As IT or system integrator, can I leverage an extremely loosely-coupled technology architecture to rapidly deploy various functional applications for my clients?
As a key player in a vertical industry (banking etc.), can I connect my partners and customers as well as developers to create a rich eco-system?
As a financial application developer, can I control the granularity of my implementation for business functions so they can be independently coded, tested, rolled out and published?
Or simply: can I have a platform similar to that of Tencent’s, Ali’s, Bytedance’s, a privilege only the Internet giants enjoy?

The answer is FinClip

FinClip: A Mini-App digital content management platform
Aim to provide a cloud-native digital foundation framework to empower enterprise digital transformation
Enable enterprises with agility, scalability and connectivity to develop, source and publish Mini-App contents as well as building self-owned digital eco-systems — exactly similar to what Internet leading platforms own, but beyond
Born in the financial industry and designed with financial service scenarios in mind, though later expanded into all industries to become a general purpose foundation technology
Provide on-premise solution that is licensable to system integrators and technology providers for reselling and redistribution

FinClip: Mini-App Digital Content Management Solution

Help enterprise manage its digital content supply chain: lower Mini-App content creation barrier, enhance content publishing and consumption channels, balance publishing agility with effective risk control