2019 could be a year of M&A for fintech: Fintech may be starting to mature enough that a wave of consolidation is inevitable, particularly as big industry players resort to acquisition to speed up their entry to the sector. Analysts polled by Bloomberg for a piece headlined Experts Predict the Five Big Fintech Trends of 2019agree that there are enough startups to make M&A viable in the industry — and that most are small enough for acquisitions to be widely feasible.

2018 was a landmark year: Fintech was all the rage in 2018, sometimes even superseding market expectations with startups like Stripe having been valued higher than the market caps of 249 S&P 500 companies. Fintech saw record levels of investment inflows this year globally, with 1,400 investments being made, CB Insight’s Lindsay Davis tells Bloomberg TV (watch, runtime: 4:29), describing the year as “a banner year for fintech.”

Challenger banks were big thing in 2018: Low- and no-fee trading startups and robo advisors were popular in 2018, but the big winner globally were challenger banks — online-only retail banks that are smaller than traditional banks and that run on mobile apps with low or no fees said Davis.