Current practices, new insights, and emerging trends of financial technologies

Abstract

Purpose Financial technologies, also known as “FinTech,” have brought disruptive changes to virtually every aspect of financial services and are becoming increasingly important in the world economic system. The purpose of this paper is to proffer a bird view of some recent studies in the key research areas of FinTech, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, crowdfunding and then to summarize the key contributions made by all the six papers in this special issue. Design/methodology/approach A literature review approach is adopted, and the summary shows that most types of FinTech innovations generate positive value to innovators, financial customers and the society. The current implications and future directions are explored based on theoretical and empirical analyses. Findings The benefits from and determinants of FinTech applications vary across different financial sectors. Together the summary of this special issue suggests that there is substantial value creation in further exploring the dynamics, mechanisms and social consequences of FinTech. Originality/value This study helps to extend knowledge by summarizing the current practices, proffering new insights and watching out emerging trends of financial technologies, and to shed light on a variety of subjects of interest to practitioners, academics and policy makers by suggesting for the future research topics.

Understanding China’s fintech sector: development, impacts and risks

“…Financial technology (fintech) is revolutionizing the financial industry at an extraordinary pace (Demirguc-Kunt et al 2018;Gomber et al 2018;Goldstein et al 2019;Hua et al 2019). With the help of digital technology, many changes, most of which were unthinkable even a decade ago, are taking place at unprecedented scale, in almost all aspects of the financial industry in China (Chen 2016;Xiao et al 2017).…”

Artificial intelligence techniques in finance and financial markets: A survey of the literature

“…Most types of FinTech innovations generate positive value to innovators, financial customers, and society. The benefits and determinants of FinTech applications vary across different financial sectors (Hua, Huang, & Zheng, 2019). The advent of the millennials with their high education, high technological awareness and distrust for big enterprises may be a reason for the successful emergence of many fintech firms and neobanks (Hill, 2018).…”

Behavioural Intention of Commercial Banks’ Customers towards Financial Technology Services

“…The traditional onlinebanking system is switched to the mobile platform by FinTech firms such as using mobile remittance and mobile payment for enlarging their business scope (Ryu, 2018;Belanche et al, 2019). The coverage of FinTech applications consists of decentralised autonomous corporations, cryptocurrency, marketplace financing, mobile payments, smart contracts and robo-advisors (Hua, Huang & Zheng, 2019). It furnishes customers with greater values, expands companies' revenues (Belanche et al, 2019), contributes to the inclusive growth, diminishes risk and improves efficiency (Singh et al, 2020).…”

“…It furnishes customers with greater values, expands companies' revenues (Belanche et al, 2019), contributes to the inclusive growth, diminishes risk and improves efficiency (Singh et al, 2020). As such, people could attain more new opportunities in deploying FinTech such as accessing financial information, abolishing middlemen, inflating transparency (Ryu, 2018) and minimising costs (Ryu, 2018;Hua et al, 2019).…”

“…Notwithstanding, global investments in Asia's FinTech stand at 49 per cent. FinTech accomodates customers better with a banking system that is based on values, improves returns for stockholders, mitigates risk to the society (Gupta & Xia, 2018) in a more efficient way (Hua et al, 2019), provides banking services to customers with a more personalized way (Komulainen et al, 2018;Singh et al, 2020) and assists to intensify the reachability of customers (Hua et al, 2019). Customers can also be more convenient, flexible and ubiquitous when using mobile banking (Komulainen et al, 2018).…”