Narrow Results

This article explores some recent macroeconomic and microeconomic approaches to financial digitalization and the relationship between banks, FinTech and BigTech. It also deals with new approaches to identify the adoption and implications of financial digitalization by consumers. We show competition between traditional banks and tech companies is mostly driven by their relative ability to manage information sharing. Regulation is still considering ways of providing a level playing field while industry participants are reacting with a mixture of strategies, many of them based on cooperation. The paper also shows there are different ways in which customers access financial digital channels and new approaches from matching learning and brain studies to identify behavioral patterns in financial digitalization decisions.

We analyze fintechs and their impact on the traditional financial system from a functional perspective. Following the approach suggested by Merton (1995) [A Functional Perspective of Financial Intermediation, Financial Management 24(2), 23–41], we show how the six core functions of financial intermediation are affected by the technological developments. This analysis provides a new perspective on the future of financial services and their regulation.