Finance Flowing Like Wine — At the Frontier of Change

There was a time when I anxiously held a long waiting ticket at a bank counter, waiting my turn. The era of stamping through bothersome stacks of documents while listening to bank staff explanations. But now all financial transactions end with a single smartphone. Opening accounts, loans, investments -- a few fingertip touches are sufficient. "When did finance change like this?" Change always arrives quietly. Living day by day without realizing it, but at some point looking back and everything has changed. Like wine. Just as one cannot consciously experience the moment a bunch of grapes ferments and matures, we realize the deepened flavor only through the passage of time. We are now living in a new era of finance. The fintech revolution timeline: internet banking (1990s) eliminated branch visits for basic transactions; mobile banking (2010s) made financial services available 24/7 from anywhere; open banking and MyData (2020s) enabled financial data portability and personalized financial services; AI-powered credit assessment (2025) uses behavioral data (spending patterns, payment consistency, financial habits) rather than just traditional credit bureau data; the paradigm shift is from "who you are" (assets, income, employment) to "how you behave" (financial habits revealed through transaction data). Wine as financial metaphor: a wine sommelier evaluates not just the variety and vintage but how the wine has been stored and how it has developed -- similarly, modern credit assessment evaluates not just the financial snapshot but the behavioral trajectory; a person with modest income but consistent saving behavior may be a better credit risk than a high earner with erratic spending.