International Journal of Economics and Business Administration

2. Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Grounds 
The origin of the term "FinTech" (financial technology) dates to early 90-ies. 
According to Professor P. Shovel, during this period, the bankers proposed projects to 
optimize banking services due to technological amplification. Such projects were 
called "FinTech", considered to be innovative and contributing to the efficiency of 
financial services. Initially, the concept of "FinTech" was applied to the technology 
of background work of financial institutions. Then, it was interpreted more widely, 
including projects of improving the financial literacy and cryptocurrency, on the one 
hand, and went beyond the boundaries of the English language, becoming a global 
slogan (Schueffel, 2017). 
Most experts agree that the surge in financial technology began after the 2008 global 
financial crisis and a lack of confidence in banks and sharply complicated access to 
credit. This period is called the Golden age of FinTech. However, interest of 
regulators, industry participants and consumers in it and in the financial technology 
sector arose after 2014. For example, in 2016 in Russia, the Central Bank created the 
"Department of financial technologies, projects and process organization", there was 
also established the Association "FinTech", which included the largest representatives 

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S.S. Galazova, L.R. Magomaeva 
 
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of the Russian financial business – the Bank of Russia, Sberbank, VTB, AlfaBank, 
etc. In addition, SWIFT and the Bank of Russia announced a competition of FinTech 
start-ups Innotribe within International Banking Congress in St. Petersburg in July 
2017.
The leaders of FinTech in the world are China and India. The share of banking 
operations performed with the use of financial technologies exceeds 50%. The 
penetration of new digital models into the US financial sector, by contrast, is a small 
share – less than 1% (Skogorev, 2017). In Russia in 2015 investments into financial 
technologies were 4% of the total volume. In 2016, they grew against the background 
of a decrease in the total investment volume and amounted to $15 million. However, 
the total volume of Russian investments into financial technologies is only 0.2% of 
the world level (Osipovskaya and Mikhaylin, 2017; Vovchenko et al., 2017). 
However, now there is no general approach to the definition of "FinTech". The most 
widely used definition is its interpretation as "a complex system uniting the sector of 
new technologies and financial services, start-ups and appropriate infrastructure" 
(Maslennikov, 2017). As a rule, in all the sources financial technologies are defined 
similarly, with small variations. Filippov (2018) defines FinTech as "an industry 
consisting of companies that use technology and innovation to compete with 
traditional financial institutions in the form of banks and intermediaries in the banking 
market".
Pshenichnikov (2018) clarifies the composition of these companies (banks and other 
financial institutions), expands and concretizes the markets of their activity (the 
market of financial services, including payment systems, capital management, 
lending, insurance and currency transactions). PwC (Global FinTech Report PwC, 
2017) and other authors (Pertseva, 2017) interpret FinTech as a dynamic segment at 
the intersection of the financial services and technology sectors, in which technology 
start-ups and new market participants apply innovative approaches to products and 
services provided by the traditional financial services sector. 
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) in 2017 gave a brief definition of "FinTech" as a 
"technological innovation of financial services", understanding it as a combination of 
products/services in the form of digital retail payments, digital wallets, FinTech-
credit, Robo-adviser (eng.robo-advisor – the robotic advisor), digital currencies, and 
their main technologies (Financial Stability Implications from FinTech, 2017). 
According to the above data FinTech goes far beyond the boundaries of the financial 
market. This allows to talk about the convergence of the financial world based on 
financial technologies. Thus, FinTech can be represented as a financial industry with 
innovations. At the same time, the concept of "financial innovations" is much broader 
than "financial technologies", because not all financial innovations can be classified 
as financial technologies (for example, the creation of a new derivative). In addition, 

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