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TED Talks are thought provoking, inspirational, and arguably one of the best ways to make your daily commute entertaining. One of the most amazing things about TED Talks is the diversity of topics that speakers discuss, and how their talks are frequently at the forefront of emerging technology.

In our last TED Talks blog post we selected a number of inspiring TED Talks that address the subject of Lending, and how machine learning, alternative data, and technology are changing the way lenders operate and offer their services. This time we’ve binge watched our way through talks that explore the topic of FinTechs and how technology is advancing the world of finances.

When it comes to FinTech, banking, and well, financial services in general it’s easy to get lost in the numbers (pun intended), and forget about the potential impact a business can have on their industry or even the world. Fortunately, TED Talks are available to inspire you to look at the big picture and use technology to create positive change in both financial service accessibility and the impact banking availability can have on an individual.

The following TED Talks focus on the subject of FinTech and cover a range of topics including the influence FinTech is having on the world of financial services, how its improving the payments industry, the ways its improving access to financial services, and perhaps most inspiringly, the positive ways it can change the world.

Here is our recommended viewing list of top TED and TEDx talks to inspire you to innovate and explore the potential of FinTech:

In the financial services industry, technology has gone from pinch hitter to MVP, but it hasn’t stopped there. In this fascinating TED Talk, author and industry expert Chris Skinner delves into the world of fintechs and why many of the most successful fintechs are founded by ‘kids’—also known as the under-40s—including Revolut, Stripe, and PayTM. Chris explores the cultural and environmental role fintechs will play in the future and how fintech can be used for the greater good to provide protection, improve inclusion, and increase education.

When it comes to making life easier for consumers, FinTech is far ahead of many of the traditional banking institutions, but Tom Blomfeld, CEO of UK challenger bank Monzo, thinks the real banking revolution is still to come. In this short, but thought provoking TEDx talk Tom discusses what the future of banking could look like when financial institutions are required to provide easy access to data.

Spiros Margaris is a world renowned FinTech thought leader, advisor, and venture capitalist. In his TEDx Talk Spiros discusses how FinTech is providing not just a positive influence on the banking industry, but also in the world. For many of us, banking is something that we take for granted, but there are a huge number of individuals who are underbanked or unbanked, such as refugees, recent immigrants, those with poor credit histories, and individuals with thin credit files. Spiros explores how FinTechs can improve the lives of the unbanked and underbanked by providing innovative banking solutions that are accessible and offer a human approach to banking services.

FinTech is evolving the future of payments! Carey Kolaja, who was Vice President of Global Consumer Products at PayPal when she recorded this inspirational TED talk, looks at our current relationship with payment transactions and how technology will drive change in the payments industry. Carey discusses the innovative ways that businesses are using technology to make payments more secure, accessible, and reliable. She also explores the potential uses of this technology in the future, from helping in emergency situations to providing economic opportunities to individuals.

Author, teacher, and Chairman of the FinTech Association of Hong Kong, Henri Arslanian explores how FinTech is revolutionizing the banking industry to create new user friendly financial services. With a digital first approach, FinTech has created new and innovative ways of interacting with existing and potential customers to extend banking services, such as investment advice typically reserved for the wealthy, to everyone. His talk doesn’t just look at the ways finTech will change how consumers access banking, it also explores how it will extend who has access to services. With so much change happening in the banking industry, are the new generation of bankers ready for a digital first banking industry?

Provenir is a risk decisioning platform that puts the power of the decisioning process in the hands of the business. It gives financial services organizations the ability to quickly integrate to data sources through APIs, deploy new risk models, and make risk decisions in seconds. Explore Provenir’s platform to learn how you can use more sophisticated decisioning models to get deeper insights into your consumers and generate decisions in microseconds.

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The business financing world is undergoing a transformation, with a myriad of freshman financial technology pioneers reshaping the way businesses acquire capital. Often, traditional lending avenues simply aren’t cutting it for small and mid-sized companies, many of which don’t follow conventional business models. These organizations, as well as those that only have a few years of operations under their belt, are being better served by the newest slate of B2B financing companies that place speed, convenience, and customer-centricity at the forefront. Toronto-based FundThough is a leader in this sphere, providing an innovative way for businesses to close the gaps between invoicing and receipt of payment.

FundThrough is one of the few invoice financing companies with a qualification and funding process that’s completed entirely online. It offers a simple application that only takes accounting information, invoice history, and the applicant’s customer-base into account, and it’s this approach to credit approval that makes FundThrough stand out.

While most lenders set strict thresholds for things like revenue, years in business and personal credit scores in order to mitigate risk, FundThrough founders believe that lending risk can be better assessed by revenue patterns and the quality of a company’s customers. In other words, organizations that do business with other trustworthy companies are more likely to be able to pay back invoice funds, regardless of the other aspects most lenders take into account.

In October 2016, FundThrough announced that it had obtained $24.6 million in its second round of funding. According to co-founder and CEO Steve Uster, these funds are being used “…to bring on partners who understand the needs of small businesses and the challenges they face.” To this point, the company has recently partnered with Quickbooks Online and FreshBooks to provide seamless access to funding directly from these accounting platforms. A new collaborative relationship between FundThrough and the enterprise and workforce management application developer Jobber is also making it easier for companies to close gaps in the payment cycle by integrating funding into the software.

There are a number of opportunities for FundThrough to expand in the invoice funding market. Uster is making the company’s underlying technology a priority, with upgrades slated for its credit decision automation process as well as further optimization of the platform’s user experience. There are also plans for additional partnerships with digitally-based accounting companies and other organizations that cater to small and medium businesses.