The platform political economy of FinTech: Reintermediation, consolidation and capitalisation

Langley, P.; Leyshon, A.

Abstract

‘FinTech’ is the digital 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 perspective for critically understanding FinTech as a platform political economy that is marked by three distinctive and related processes: reintermediation, consolidation, and capitalisation. Through experimentation with the platform business model and building on the digital infrastructures and data flows of the broader platform ecosystem, a constellation of organisations – including start-ups, early-career firms, BigTech companies and incumbent banks – are engaged in processes of platform reintermediation. Changing the bases of competition in retail money and financial markets and encouraging oligopoly and even monopoly, the reintermediation processes of FinTech are presently manifest in strong tendencies towards platform consolidation. The imagined potential of FinTech has also triggered intensive processes of capitalisation, with platforms receiving significant prospective investment by venture capital, private equity funds, banks and BigTech firms.

Citation

Langley, P., & Leyshon, A. (2021). The platform political economy of FinTech: Reintermediation, consolidation and capitalisation. New Political Economy, 26(3), 376-388. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2020.1766432

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 22, 2020
• Online Publication Date: May 20, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Apr 22, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 20, 2021
• Journal: New Political Economy
• Print ISSN: 1356-3467
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-9923
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 376-388
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2020.1766432