Trends and patenting leaders in fintech

The financial technology sector is now in a digital revolution. Groups of start-ups and new companies are challenging reputable market players. Innovations in this area allow newcomers to use new business models, effectively deliver their services and offer customers new profitable solutions. Recently, we found some very interesting data about the countries and companies with the largest number of patents in the field of fintech. The authors of the study are specialists from Relecura, which offers its own platform for analyzing large amounts of patent data and storage of scientific and technical information for inventors and corporate leaders working with intellectual property. Next we present to your attention some of the conclusions made on the basis of infographics, as well as the infographics itself, translated and adapted by the experts of the international processing company PayOnline .

1. Large players give the greatest preference fintech market in the United States. Relecura experts counted 45410 patents filed in the USA. The top three also includes Japan with 16,978 and Korea with 9,902 Fintech patents. Russia ranks 13th in the ranking with 470 patents, and closes the list of New Zealand countries, where 318 patents are registered.
2. American international payment operator Visa is the leader among patent holders. Researchers from Relecura counted 1342 documents issued in the name of the company confirming the authorship. A bit behind Visa Bank of America and Hitachi: 1052 and 1048 patents, respectively. First Data international payment technology provider has 603 patents, and Diebold ATM manufacturer ranks fifth in this list with 566 registrations.
3. Within Fintech, more patents (about 50,446) are accounted for by payment solutions. They are followed by banking products (21571) and private wealth management (12011). Next come products for work in the securities markets (9489) and insurance and credit solutions with 6,652 and 6,592 patents, respectively.
4. In this study, Fintech is presented in several advanced categories: data analysis, Internet of things, mobile platforms, security, cloud data processing and cryptocurrency. Among technological categories, data analysis leads the way: this type of service accounts for the largest number of fintech patents (29955). The next most popular categories are the Internet of Things (29946) and mobile platforms (19412).
5. The championship in the category of the so-called unicorns, that is, startups, the value of which exceeded $ 1 billion, belongs to Square, which has registered 143 patents. He is followed by Mozido and Powa, with 58 and 17 patents, respectively.
6. The study also contains information on other non-Fintech sectors. In telecommunications, NTT owns the largest number of registrations. In the category of information technology with 373 patents leads SAP. It is followed by Accenture and Oracle with c 302 and 213 patents, respectively. In the retail category, Target (70) ranked first, while its larger competitor, Walmart, is lagging behind in this respect, having received only 41 patents.
7. In total, the first 200 companies in the Relecura ranking account for only 39% of fintech patents in all key categories. Thus, we can conclude that Fintech patents are distributed among many different rights holders. Companies such as Bizmodeline, First Data, Diebold, Intuit , Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Hartford are among the main financial organizations in the rating.
8. Since 2007, leading companies in the rating, such as Visa, Bank of America and MasterCard, have intensified their patent processing activities. The period between 2006 and 2009 is marked by a sharp increase in patent activity by the Shinhan Bank, which has now come to naught. IBM, which had lost interest in Fintech in 2001, began to file applications for financial technology patents again in 2012. MasterCard significantly increased the number of registrations associated with Fintech in 2013.
9. Analysis of patent rights change records shows that American Express has sold its patents to many different companies. Among the first buyers are names such as III Holdings 1 LLC, Xatra Fund and Propulsion Remote Holdings LLC. The study also shows that IBM sold some of its patents to eBay, Google and Toshiba. Google also acquired patents from Motorola Mobility.

Research Methodology:

Patents were searched using keywords and Fintech-related classification codes. During the analysis, all patents registered in the last 20 years were considered, with the exception of those whose validity period has expired. The search for a subset of a set of fintech data was conducted with the aim of categorizing patents depending on the specifics of financial products or services. During the search, the following categories were formed: payment solutions and banking services, private capital management, securities market, insurance and lending. In order to obtain records on the transfer of rights to patents, a search was conducted on the array of data on the change of patent owners. This made it possible to identify key participants in the transfer of intellectual property in Fintech.

Prepared based on Relecura data ( 1 , 2 ). Follow the news in our corporate blog, there is still a lot of interesting things ahead. If you need to accept payments on the website or in a mobile application, please contact us , we will select a quality payment solution and advise on all questions of interest.