Description
‘FinTech’ is the digital economic sector of retail money and finance widely proclaimed to be transforming banking in the global North and ‘banking the unbanked’ in the global South. This paper develops a critical understanding of FinTech as a platform political economy marked by processes of reintermediation, consolidation, and capitalisation. Experimenting with the platform business model and building on the digital infrastructures and data flows of the platform ecosystem, start-up and early-career firms, BigTech companies and incumbent institutions alike are engaged in processes of platform reintermediation. Successful platform reintermedation turns on transforming and monopolising the market structures of retail money and finance, such that FinTech has particularly strong tendencies towards platform consolidation. And, the future potential of FinTech is highly capitalised, with platforms providing the focus for prospective investment by venture capital, private equity, banks and BigTechs.
