Susanne Chishti - FinTech For Dummies

FinTech For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .

Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.

For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit https://hub.wiley.com/community/support/dummies .

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com . For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com .

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020936884

ISBN 978-1-119-42726-1 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-42724-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-42725-4 (ebk)

1. Chapter 3
2. Chapter 6
3. Chapter 7
4. Chapter 9
5. Chapter 13
6. Chapter 14
7. Chapter 18

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 4
4. Chapter 5
5. Chapter 6
6. Chapter 7
7. Chapter 8
8. Chapter 9
9. Chapter 10
10. Chapter 11
11. Chapter 12
12. Chapter 14

Welcome, FinTech friends! Thanks for picking up this book, in which we explain the ins and outs of Financial Technology, or FinTech for short. FinTech is all about bringing transformative and disruptive innovation to financial services by applying new and emerging technologies and satisfying consumer and business needs through automation. Were passionate about FinTech, and we hope we can pass on some of our enthusiasm and knowledge to you.

For better or for worse, the financial industry has been going through some highly disruptive and substantial transformations in the last few years, and most of these are related to technology. Many traditional financial institutions arent equipped for the digital future, for a variety of reasons, and are at risk of being displaced by newer and more agile competitors. We hope in this book to guide leaders in such institutions to help them implement cutting-edge financial technologies. But thats just half of our target audience here. We also hope to guide people on the other side of that competitive equation, who are part of the FinTech disruption or who aspire to be.

As we were preparing to write this book, we started out by looking at the competition. What books on FinTech already exist, and how can we improve on them? We found that there really wasnt any direct competition to what we wanted to do. Many of the existing FinTech books were very broad in covering this topic, particularly from a retail consumer perspective. Some others were too specific, focusing on single issues such as blockchain or digital currencies.

Our vision for this book is to provide a pragmatic look at the most important aspects of FinTech, particularly in the business-to-business (B2B) area. B2B is especially interesting because its less about FinTech disruption and more about collaboration with established institutions to jointly achieve the needed transformations.

Sidebars (boxes of text) in this book give you a more in-depth look at a certain topic. Although they dig deeper into a particular point, these sidebars arent crucial to your understanding of the rest of the book. Feel free to read them or skip them. You can also pass over the text that accompanies the Technical Stuff icon. The text marked with this icon gives some technical details about FinTech that are interesting and informative, but you can still come away with the information you need without reading it.

One last note: Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If youre reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as its noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesnt exist. If youre reading this as an e-book, youve got it easy just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

This book is basic enough that almost anyone can understand it, but it was written largely for a few specific types of people. As we wrote this book, we had the following audiences in mind:

• Financial services professionals who want to educate themselves in FinTech instead of bluffing their way through
• FinTech firms that are looking to engage with financial institutions
• Venture capitalists and other investors looking for a broader view of the market than the next challenger bank or payments provider