Major financial services players, firms in other major centres (especially China), and others wanting into the sector have discovered "fintech", if a new report by Accenture showing a likely quadrupling of money flowing into the sector in less than a year is any indicator. The management consulting, technology and outsourcing firm has measured the rise in financial technology investment across Asia-Pacific, and said it increased from about US$880 million in all of 2014 to nearly US$3.5 billion in just the first nine months of 2015.The largest share of 2015 Asia-Pacific fintech investment deals were in payments (40 per cent) and lending (25 per cent), which have traditionally been the sole domain of banks. According to the report, the volume of deals is set to increase slightly this year but the average value of deals has blown out on the back of a few big bets - for instance, investments from Alibaba Group Holding and its Ant Financial Services Group subsidiary into Paytm, a mobile payment and commerce platform in India, as well as fundraising efforts by Ping An Insurance Group venture Lufax, which has been developing multiple alternative financing and investment platforms, including peer-to-peer and business-to-customer platforms.  Financial services firms are also now turning to fintech for help in streamlining operations, complying with changing regulations and new currencies. Accenture forecasts that blockchain, the underlying distributed ledger technology that supports the exchange of crypto currency and cryptographically secured financial assets, will increasingly be a focus for startups, banks and investors.  As a stand-alone technology, blockchain could help banks, credit card companies and clearinghouses collaborate to create safer, faster accounting and optimise capital use by reducing counterparty risk and transaction latency. "Another fintech opportunity worth watching is the impact of cloud on this industry," said Accenture. "Banks can satisfy regulators by keeping sensitive customer data more securely in a private cloud, while still taking advantage of the efficiency, flexibility, on-demand capabilities and lower costs cloud can offer."