The Development of FinTech. Opportunities and Risks for the Financial Industry in the Digital Age - With Preface to the Series Dedicated to FinTech

FinTech is a new part of the financial industry that is radically innovating the way financial services are built and offered. In this paper, we analyse FinTech characteristics, their activities and related risks, highlighting analogies and differences in the activities performed by the financial intermediaries and the financial markets that are subject to specific regulation. In general, the study underlines the opportunity to pursue an effective balance between the urge to stimulate innovation and competition in the financial markets to bring benefits to the customers, on the one hand, and the need to ensure market stability both at micro and macro-level, transparency and fairness towards customers, as well as the prevention of unlawful activities, on the other hand. Additionally, the paper provides an overview of the main strategies that incumbents are following in the new market conditions