Special Issue on Frontiers of FinTech and Value Networks

Financial Technology (FinTech) is defined as “technology-driven financial innovation” according to the Financial Stability Council. FinTech transforms or innovates financial products, business models and business processes  to promote financial development and improve quality and efficiency of financial systems. This results in value networks that connect individuals and institutions as a financial ecosystem. This special issue offers a unique forum of academic research in the intersection of FinTech and value networks, particularly for frontier research. We encourage submissions that will have far-reaching theoretical and practical impacts based on real-world observations and experiments in the industry, including research in progress. Given the nature of the journal, we discourage submissions that are either mathematical models without strong empirical foundation and business applications or case studies that are lack of theoretical impacts.

In the context of the new scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, financial technology and applications are flourishing. Business intelligence, big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things and other information technologies are deeply integrated with financial business to provide continuous innovation for new financial services.  The scope of research and development (R&D) activities in FinTech include mobile payments, cross-border money transfers, peer-to-peer loans, crowdfunding, and more recently, new developments of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and robo-investing.

Since 2008, a new era of FinTech has emerged in both the developed and developing worlds. It is reported that FinTech is considered one of the major investments for most competitive financial firms. According to a report published by KPMG (2018), in addition to expanding vertically, FinTech investments expanded geographically across all regions of the world. With a $150 million raised in the first quarter of 2018, Brazil-based Nubank reached unicorn status while companies from five separate countries in Europe were among the region’s top venture deals (e.g. UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland). The Asia FinTech market continued to be dominated by China and India. China has been at the forefront of these developments due to the pervasive use of online trading platforms and a banking system that is increasingly technology driven.

The rapid development of FinTech has led to the gradual blurring of financial business boundaries and the breakthrough of time and space limitations in financial risk transmission, thus bringing new challenges to monetary policy, financial stability in financial markets and financial regulation. In 2018, the Bali Fintech Agenda was endorsed by the Executive Boards of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group. It lays out key issues to consider in understanding how technological innovation is changing the provision of financial services and what implications these developments have for economic efficiency and growth, financial stability, inclusion and financial integrity. In August 2019, the People's Bank of China issued the FinTech Development Plan (2019-2021) that includes 27 main tasks such as conquering major scientific frontier issues and basic theories of FinTech, carrying out forward-looking and basic research efforts, and supporting universities and research institutes to establish FinTech related disciplines. Worldwide initiatives of FinTech have caused a great wave in its adoption and innovation. Consequently, accurate and up-to-date awareness of FinTech is an urgent requirement for both academics and professionals. Thus, surveying recent achievements of FinTech and stimulating research in FinTech are essential. The purpose of this special issue is to offer a forum for state-of-the-art research results in the area of FinTech.  Thorough surveys and in-depth examinations of selected topics in this area are also welcome.

Topics covered:

• Anti-money laundering via advanced technologies
• Bitcoin and digital currencies
• Blockchain technology and applications in finance
• Complex analytics in big data for finance
• Data analytics for financial applications
• Federated learning in value networks
• Fraud detection in financial big data
• Governance of big data finance
• Innovative value networks such as cross-border payments
• Integration of structured and unstructured financial data
• Internet insurance and InsurTech
• Internet wealth management and Robo-Advising
• Mobile payment technologies
• Network analytics in finance
• Peer-to-peer lending
• Crowdfunding
• Privacy preservation in financial big data
• RegTech for finance and banking
• Security control in big data finance

Important Deadlines:

• Submission deadline: 30 December 2020

Submission Instructions:

Please read the Guide for Authors before submitting. All articles should be submitted online , please select Frontiers of “FinTech and Value Networks” on submission.

Guest Editors:

• Sang-Pil HAN, Arizona State University, United States, shan73@asu.edu
• Daning HU, South University of Science and Technology, China, hdaning@gmail.com
• Jian LI, Beijing University of Technology, China, lijiansem@bjut.edu.cn
• J. Leon ZHAO, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China, leonzhao@cuhk.edu.cn

Coordination Assistant:

• Wei HU, City University of Hong Kong, China, Fintech2020jmse@gmail.com

For further enquiries, please send emails to FinTech2020JMSE@gmail.com, and the editing team will answer your emails promptly.