Disrupting finance : Fintech and strategy in the 21st century

Abstract

This second volume in Palgrave Studies in Digital Business & Enabling Technologies further contributes to multidisciplinary research on digital business and enabling technologies in Europe by exploring the evolving domain of the next generation of fnancial technologies or “FinTech”. The concept of evolution is important in this context as FinTech is not a new concept. Since the 1950s, each decade has witnessed a new technology that has transformed how fnancial services operate and how we interact with them. Credit card processing, ATMs, electronic stock trading, e-commerce are just some of the myriad of technologies that we take for granted. Today, we are seeing the advent of a new generation of FinTech built on near-ubiquitous access to the Internet through mobile and cloud computing, machine learning, artifcial intelligence and blockchain. These technologies are resulting in signifcant disruptive changes to the fnancial services sector, not least opening up the sector to increased competition and empowering customers in ways unthinkable just a decade ago.