Designing a Process Model of Fintech Platforms’ Survival

Objective
In the past decade, with the emergence of financial technology startups known as "FinTech", economic models and traditional market activity in the field of financial services underwent a complete transformation, and traditional approaches gave way to new ideas of providing financial services using various technologies. Nowadays, despite the influential role of fintechs in the digital economy of every country and the necessity of their survival for the economic stability and media transparency of countries, research conducted in the existing literature is not rich enough. They rarely model the process that fintechs should be in order to survive and most of the studies related to this field have dealt with other issues such as factors affecting survival. This is in a situation where due to the emerging nature of fintech ecosystem services and their flexible and evolving nature, and also the complexity and multi-dimensionality of their field of activity with the momentary changes of customers' tastes and needs, entrepreneurs are confronting many challenges in order to master all matters. On the other hand, the emerging fintech ecosystem has also created many gaps in regulatory activities, and the country's legislative system has not yet found a mature approach to this ecosystem and has become an obstacle to the survival, growth and development of startups by imposing cumbersome laws. In this situation, the survival of fintech startups is exposed to a high risk, since due to the high number of financial transactions in fintechs, in case of ignorance of the ways to maintain survival, the damages caused by their failure will bring on serious damage to the economic body of the country. As there is still lack of sufficient documented experience for survival in the field of digital financial services, newcomers and owners of fintech startups providing financial platforms need to know the process preventing their startup from failing. Therefore, the issue of this research is the lack of transparency of the fintech platforms’ success path in order to provide financial services and play the media role, and also not knowing the steps of the process that must be taken for survival. Considering the high rate of exit and unsustainability of businesses in Iran, it is necessary to look for a model to reduce the failure rate of active startups in the country. This is why the present article intends to design a model using the experience of successful fintechs that have survived in the early years of their activity to introduce the process that leads to survival with a prescriptive approach. The purpose of choosing this topic is to identify the mechanism of implementation of solutions to increase the survival chance of fintech platforms and to obtain a process model to provide recommendations and solutions to reduce the probability of startups’ failure in order to create knowledge about the survival process of startups and also to present the steps that should be taken to maintain survival.
Research Methodology
The method of this research is qualitative and of the multiple case study type by in-depth interview used to collect data from 18 senior managers of successful fintechs. By coding the data in the first cycle and the second cycle, the main structures of this process model were designed and for each stage, recommendations and prescriptions were obtained which defines the path to achieve fintechs’ survival. To validate the model, four criteria were used to confirm its scientific accuracy: 1) credibility 2) reliability 3) verifiability and 4) transferability.

To validate the model using reliability, after the initial design of the process model, it was again controlled and reviewed by all participants, and the research model was modified based on the feedback. In addition, in order to ensure the accuracy of the research, the entire process of doing the work was reviewed by colleagues and the final result was modified based on the feedback. Also, to increase credibility, the participants in the research sample were selected with the maximum variety of experience.
To validate the model using reliability, in this research, the researcher used the first and second cycle coding, and the reliability of the research has been increased with the direct quotes of the interviewees and their exact words. In addition, one of the ways to increase reliability is to control the mental biases of the researcher during data collection, in this research, during the interviews, an external observer was used to carefully check the data in order to reduce biases and increase the stability of the research.
To validate the model using verifiability, in this research, in order to track the progress of the research and provide the possibility of auditing the research by the audience and readers, all the stages of research and data collection have been fully described so that the progress process from beginning to end be fully traceable.
To validate the model using transferability, increasing the transferability criterion and generalizing the research results in other fintechs, interviews were conducted from the maximum diversity of the studied companies by choosing from different types of fintech.

In this research, this model has been tried to be a process that can be used for newcomers of fintech so that they can take the necessary steps to increase the survival of fintech by sharing the experience of successful entrepreneurs and transferring the concepts of the model to the activity platform of newcomers and those who intend to launch their own platform. Also, one of the ways to increase the transferability is to increase the suitability of the data with the environment of study, which can be investigated by providing more details regarding the participants and the characteristics of the environment. In this research, the information related to the statistical population of the research and the research sample is stated in general, and in the section of presenting the research results, the proposal for the design and development of this model in fields other than fintech is also presented.
Findings
To clarify the process in which fintechs, as a financial medium, must go through to guaranty their survival, this article has designed a process model using the experience of successful fintechs that have been active for more than 42 months. The stages of this model have five phases: prerequisite, embryonic, breeding, launching and growth, and each phase has more detailed structures and stages that are included in the appendix of the model with necessary recommendations for each stage. In the theoretical contribution of this research, an attempt has been made to change the way entrepreneurs look at the concept of survival by relying on the experience of experts and the designed model, and the most important theoretical contribution of this research is to change the way of looking at failure and survival. Failure means gaining experience and it is a stage of success that should lead to accurate learning and not repeating mistakes. Fast decision-making is the key to survival in the dynamic and turbulent environment of the fintech ecosystem. Based on the designed model, the entrepreneur must first be alert to the changes in his environment by continuously monitoring the environment in order to catch opportunities and follow up the design and development of the product and business at the same time because in fintech, the product and the business are interdependent and not separate from each other. The type of entrepreneur's viewpoint on moderation in the amount of innovation, the type of communication with big and long-standing competitors, as well as the way of interacting with regulators and supervisory bodies are among the other findings of this research in the analysis of the collected data.
Discussion & Conclusion
According to the survival model of fintech platforms, in the process of identifying opportunities for fintech startups, the entrepreneur should monitor the environment by relying on his previous experience and skills to identify, evaluate, screen and select suitable opportunities for exploitation. For the conceptual design of the product, based on the needs of customers and existing priorities, ideation, design and development of the initial concept and its evaluation should be done in order to choose the best possible product concept. The product development process is a cycle of producing, measuring and learning, during which the prototype produced is tested for a small group of customers and the necessary modifications are made based on the feedback to be ready to be presented in the market. With the formation of founders’ team, the business concept should be designed based on the vision and mission of the company. To achieve this purpose, it is necessary to identify the target customers and their needs by studying the market and its segmentation, and by analyzing the competition situation in the market, design a business model. In case the business model would not meet the needs of the market and offer products, then it is necessary to study the market again and go through this process. In order to expand the business, company strategies should be developed, financial model should be defined, services should be priced, suppliers and possible risks, geographic location, company size and marketing methods should be determined based on the designed business concept in order to have a business plan. If this business plan is not suitable for business development and is not scalable and repeatable, you should revise the strategies and go through this process again. Another special feature of this model is the synchronization of product design and development and business design and development. In fintech platforms, business is not a separate concept from the product, and these two stages must go in accordance with each other and at the same time. To set up the company, it is necessary to develop customers and form functional departments and try to attract capital, develop infrastructure, and solve legal issues by using professional consultants after providing the basic physical facilities and recruiting the necessary forces. For the commercialization and growth of the company, it is necessary to implement marketing plans on a larger scale, grow by networking and interacting with regulators, increase the size of its market share, and by continuously monitoring the changes in the national and international environment, be ready to review and rotate the previous steps related to the product and business to make appropriate reactions. Therefore, the findings of this research show that in order to maintain the survival of their platforms, fintechs must go through a process in a targeted, scalable, repeatable and iterative way in order to face competitors, sector regulators, suppliers and customers, constantly able to adapt to new conditions and use the opportunities. For this purpose, the media role of fintechs will be the lever of their power in streamlining to provide new technology-based services.