Current practices, new insights, and emerging trends of financial technologies

Purpose: Financial technologies, also known as “FinTech,” have brought disruptive changes to virtually every aspect of financial services and are becoming increasingly important in the world economic system. The purpose of this paper is to proffer a bird view of some recent studies in the key research areas of FinTech, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, crowdfunding and then to summarize the key contributions made by all the six papers in this special issue. Design/methodology/approach: A literature review approach is adopted, and the summary shows that most types of FinTech innovations generate positive value to innovators, financial customers and the society. The current implications and future directions are explored based on theoretical and empirical analyses. Findings: The benefits from and determinants of FinTech applications vary across different financial sectors. Together the summary of this special issue suggests that there is substantial value creation in further exploring the dynamics, mechanisms and social consequences of FinTech. Originality/value: This study helps to extend knowledge by summarizing the current practices, proffering new insights and watching out emerging trends of financial technologies, and to shed light on a variety of subjects of interest to practitioners, academics and policy makers by suggesting for the future research topics.