A Review of the Potential Impacts of Fintech on the Financial Services Sector: Examples in the European Union, sub-Saharan Africa, China, and the United States.

Abstract

This paper examines the potential effects of Fintech on the global financial services sector. Due to Fintech's bourgeoning nature, the paper focuses only on three elements: Alternative payment methods, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and investment and banking services. To analyze the influence of Fintech companies on traditional financial services providers, the reasons behind Fintech's quick development and expansion along with details on the current status of Fintech regulation, this thesis uses a literature review to refer to four geographic and political regions (i.e. the European Union, Sub-Saharan Africa, China, and the United States). The review shows that current regulation of Fintech in the aforementioned regions is undeveloped and could lead to negative effects on the global financial services sector such as corruption of cybersecurity, infringement of privacy and utilization of Fintech services for illegal reasons. Therefore, authorities in the European Union, Sub-Saharan Africa, China, and the United States need to focus on creating appropriate regulations for Fintech in order to ease potential negative effects and integrate the benefits of Fintech startups to a global scale.