AI is catalyzing a sweeping transformation across industries, and fintech is no exception. Players ranging from Tencent, Alibaba, and JD.com to traditional financial institutions view this as a remarkable opportunity, embracing AI with heightened expectations.

Today, internet giants are leveraging AI to redefine their roles in fintech, while traditional players are upgrading their offerings in tandem. Regardless of the approach, one thing is clear: the advent of the AI era will usher in a transformative upgrade for fintech.

To view this upgrade solely as a connection of upstream and downstream financial industries would be to underestimate AI's profound impact on fintech. The evolution of fintech in the AI era differs fundamentally from that of the internet era. Recognizing the essence of this evolution is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of this new paradigm.

The true significance of AI in fintech lies at the front end.

With the rise of large AI models, a new era of AI-driven competition for user engagement is unfolding. However, many people perceive AI through an internet lens, exemplified by the proliferation of chatbots. Similarly, when considering AI's impact on fintech, they often fall into the trap of seeing it merely as a new way to acquire backend users.

In reality, AI's greater significance in fintech lies in its empowerment and transformation of frontend elements. AI transforms frontend fintech elements, processes, and products to better serve backend users, rather than merely acquiring backend traffic and users.

This involves transforming traditional fintech elements into AI-driven ones, upgrading operating processes and logic for greater efficiency, and shifting from extensive to precise, personalized supply methods.

When fintech achieves such an inside-out upgrade and front-to-back transformation through AI, it truly enters the AI era.

AI transforms fintech from the inside out.

Reflecting on the internet era of fintech, we see a clear roadmap: internet players connected financial products with users by transforming external channels, marketing, and other aspects of fintech. Essentially, finance remained unchanged, and the significance of the internet for fintech waned as its functions became irrelevant.

The numerous disorders and risks in fintech during the internet era partly stemmed from internet methods that only altered the industry's external landscape, failing to effect internal change. While these methods did increase efficiency, they did so at the cost of expanding risks.

In the AI era, a comprehensive inside-out transformation is needed to ensure that efficiency gains are scientific, objective, and rational. The current deep transformation of fintech by AI exemplifies this.

Both the comprehensive embrace of AI by Tencent, Alibaba, and JD.com and the high hopes placed on AI by traditional financial players demonstrate an attempt to conduct a deep, inside-out transformation of fintech, aiming for coordinated front-end and back-end development.

This inside-out approach is a manifestation of fintech's supply-side reform. Only through such a transformation can fintech truly change and find new ways to balance supply and demand.

AI brings fintech back to its core attributes and original essence.

Finance's core attributes and original essence involve supporting and empowering the real economy and meeting users' financial needs. However, this was not fully achieved in the internet era.

Many fintech platforms and players viewed fintech as a means to acquire users and traffic, seeing it as an isolated, closed system. While this approach did acquire users to some extent, it also distanced fintech from its core attributes and original essence.

As fintech encounters challenges and evolves, more players are recognizing new opportunities for it to return to its core attributes and original essence. JD.com's supply chain fintech and Tencent's support for the real economy through fintech are evidence of this return.

If the internet era separated fintech from the real economy and industries, AI's greatest significance lies in restoring fintech's core attributes and original essence. In the AI era, finance will achieve deep integration with real industries and the real economy.

AI's magic lies in its ability to bridge the digital and real economies. It finds ways to integrate these two, enabling a comprehensive upgrade under its mechanism.

Final Thoughts

AI is catalyzing a sweeping transformation across industries, including fintech. Players from Tencent, Alibaba, JD.com, to traditional financial institutions are all turning to AI. AI is opening up new horizons for us.

However, viewing AI through an internet lens or as a mere traffic acquisition tool will miss its era's new opportunities. The same applies to fintech. Finding new ways for AI to transform fintech and truly leveraging it for a transformative upgrade is the only way to unlock fintech's new growth engine in the AI era.

Tencent, Alibaba, JD.com, and others have already embarked on this journey. Who will be next?