By the end of 2014, the Chinese government had adopted new regulations requiring 75 % of all technology products used by Chinese financial institutions to be classified as “secure and controllable” by 2019. This means suppliers and service providers will be forced to turn over their secret source code to Chinese auditors to enable invasive governmental audits to detect back doors into hardware and software. This rule applies to all financial institutions and their suppliers providing financial services in China, making competition pretty hard for foreign companies.
In India the regulation and supervision of the financial system has a complex multi-level architecture undertaken by different regulatory authorities. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulates and supervises the major part of the financial system. The supervisory role of the RBI covers commercial banks, urban co-operative banks (UCBs), some financial institutions, and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs). Regional Rural Banks, the co-operative banks, and housing finance companies are supervised by the National Housing Bank (NHB). Through the Department of Company Affairs (DCA), the Government of India regulates deposit-taking activities of corporates, other than NBFCs. The Indian capital market, mutual funds, and other capital market intermediaries are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI); the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) regulates the insurance sector; and the Pension Funds Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) regulates pension funds.
In 2011 only about 35 % of Indians over the age of 15 held an account at a formal financial institution.29 After a failed initiative to connect each household with a bank account, the ADHAR initiative issued 770 unique identities (UID), a cornerstone for easy mobile SIM card registration and mobile money. Promoted by the PMJDY campaign, today about 99.7 % of households are connected to a bank account. Driven by this huge success, the Indian RBI committee started to accept applications from companies for a specialized banking licence – a payment-only bank licence, subject to regulatory scrutiny and clearance, it was granted to first applicants in late 2015.
Payment Services are Globally Regulated
Adding payment services to your portfolio will trigger another set of strict regulations. To prevent money laundering, payment services in general, including P2P, P2B, and B2B services, are heavily regulated by governments almost everywhere. The FATF (Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering), an international joint organization of more than 34 member countries located at the global OECD offices in Belgium, issued in 2012 a comprehensive framework against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. This internationally accepted framework has been converted into very specific national money transfer regulations, which are essential when operating an international or global money transfer or payment service.
Europe implemented the Directive on Payment Services (PSD), to provide the legal framework for the creation of an EU-wide single market for payments. The PSD, recently updated to PSD2, aims to establish a modern and comprehensive set of rules applicable to all payment services in the European Union. The target is to make cross-border payments as easy, efficient, and secure as “national” payments within a Member State. The PSD also seeks to improve competition by opening up payment markets to new entrants, thus fostering greater efficiency and cost reduction. At the same time, the Directive provides the necessary legal platform for the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).
In the US, on 26 January 2015 the Federal Reserve System issued the federal “Strategies for Improving the U.S. Payment System”, which represents a multi-faceted plan for collaborating with payment system stakeholders including large and small businesses, emerging payments firms, card networks, payment processors, consumers, and financial institutions to enhance the speed, safety and efficiency of the US payment system. This document includes multi-level regulations and comments to ISO 20022 to improve the efficiency and security of national and cross-border payments.
Local and Global Compliance – Make, Buy, or Partner?
Each FinTech, each service, each level, and each geography has its own set of rules and you must implement a strategy for how you might use regulation to your advantage at every stage of your FinTech’s expansion and development. The way you manage the process at each stage will have substantial implications for later stages. You may need to exchange a suboptimal customer experience or fast growth, for example, to gain regulatory approval en route to providing a better customer experience and faster growth later.
Even something as simple as regulation in a specific geography must be carefully considered. For example, where you choose to base your start-up is one of the most important decisions that you will make. There may be local, national, and international laws that can support (or damage) your business model and it is up to you to find them. Global examples of problems abound, like Uber entering a market regardless of legal and industry-specific regulations, resulting in many regulatory and union challenges at a local level in several countries and cities around the world. Others, like PayPal, first carefully investigated the regulatory ecosystem in each region, launched a very basic “ebay payment service”, and then expanded into other areas, i.e. P2P payments, after knowing exactly how to comply with each regulation for each service in each jurisdiction. Having a revenue stream originating in the jurisdiction also helped.
If you have got multi-million or billion-dollar funding for a global business, you may have the funds to buy any advice that you may need from local or global consultant firms. For FinTech start-ups, it might not be a bad idea partnering with medium-sized, flexible local bank heroes, and be guided by some experienced experts. Throughout all geographies (China is a more complex story), there are some great and powerful banks specializing in FinTech backbone services, e.g. Barclays (UK), biw-Bank & Fidor (Germany), mBank (Poland), Santander (Spain), Toronto-Domion (Canada), Westpac Banking Corp. (Australia), and many others. For a fee they will take care of much of the relevant regulatory stuff so that you can concentrate on your core business.
Regardless of any purchased advice or great partnership, please keep in mind that you will never be able to outsource or delegate regulatory compliance. If compliance becomes part of your company, your life, and your DNA, it will be one of your key success factors.
Lending (Capital) in the 21st Century
By Rodolfo Gonzalez
Partner, Foundation Capital
Finance seems too big. Certainly, some banks are still too big to fail. But what if finance is not big enough yet? Financial services are highly concentrated. Much as the wealthiest 1 % of households control 20 % of income in the United States, the distribution of consumer financial services can be viewed in the same way – but on a global scale. Right now, only 50 % of people worldwide have a savings account30 and just 20 % have access to a loan product from a financial institution. There are roughly five billion people that banks do not serve today. More than anything, finance is poorly distributed.
It is staggering to think how banking – one of the oldest, most powerful, and most globalized industries – remains elusive for four-fifths of humankind. It is also telling that banks have not figured out how to profit from lending to those other five billion people (while still alienating plenty of their actual customers by way of poor service). Last year, in Foundation Capital’s white paper, it was predicted that new marketplace lending platforms would originate $1 trillion in loans within the decade31 – but what if the actual potential