On 8 October 2019 DALIR’s Founder Dr Dajkovic spoke on a panel for the launch of the new book on Fintech, recognizing DALIR as a leading actor in the FINTECH industry. The book is a compilation of 34 authors from around the world treating various topics on the cutting edge of fintech.
A brief review of the book follows.
With the laws and regulations of this very dynamic area changing so swiftly, the book does a great job of capturing the state of it at an important juncture when many questions are being raised. For instance, which of the Fintech activities need to be within the regulatory parameter and how do we in general tackle the reality of the cross-border nature of this sector whether it relates to crowdfunding, payments or cryptoassets. The interlinks between blockchain and privacy were also discussed and the challenges for applying GDPR to these innovative solutions. This complements a recently issued study by the EU Parliament on this hot topic quite well.
The book also discusses the important role of ‘TechTech’ firms (referred to by the EBA as ‘Big Tech’ firms) like Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook. It will be interesting to see what long-term impact they will have on the competition in the sector as they are progressively stepping more and more into the payment area from being a customer of payment service providers to becoming a payment service provider themselves.
Jelena Madir, Chief Counsel of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), was the driving force behind this great work. She asked the right questions and extracted very valuable input from the various contributors. She herself also contributed a chapter on the key question of what ‘Fintech’ is and what it is not. Furthermore, she inspires the reader to think about the wider use of smart contracts and all the challenges that come with it.
