from Part IV - From FinTech to TechFin to BigTech to FinTech 4.0
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2023
This chapter focuses on the evolution of non-financial businesses such as technology, e-commerce, and telecommunications companies (tech companies) entering the financial services sector: TechFins. China has been at the forefront of this change, with Alibaba establishing the online financial conglomerate Ant Group, which we have discussed in previous chapters. The global tech behemoths of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook have also all entered the financial services sector in various ways. The chapter considers the emergence of digital finance platforms in the context of traditional finance and then considers the entry of BigTech firms into finance. Together, these processes constitute the expression of the combination of the economies of scope and scale of finance combined with the network effects of data and technology. Together, they embody one of the major trends we characterise as at the heart of the current era of FinTech 4.0: a natural process of concentration, with many benefits, as well as many risks and challenges, which are the subject of Chapters 17, 18, and 19.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.