Banks are unique in that they combine the production of liquid claims with loans. They can replicate most of what FinTech firms can do, but FinTech firms benefit from an uneven playing field in that they are less regulated than banks. The uneven playing field enables non-bank FinTech firms to...

In this paper, we review the growing literature on FinTech lending – the provision of credit facilitated by technology that improves the customer-lender interaction or lenders’ screening and monitoring of borrowers. FinTech lending has grown rapidly, though in developed economies like the...

We study the personal credit market using unique individual-level data covering fintech and traditional lenders. We show that fintech lenders acquire market share by first lending to higher-risk borrowers and then to safer borrowers, and mainly rely on hard information to make credit decisions....

The FinTech sector has begun to grow rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa. I document far greater adoption of social media, digital currency, ride sharing, and other FinTech applications in countries with a common law legal heritage compared to those with a civil law system, suggesting that legal...

We analyze the information content of the digital footprint – information that people leave online simply by accessing or registering on a website – for predicting consumer default. Using more than 250,000 observations, we show that even simple, easily accessible variables from the digital...

Technology-based ("FinTech") lenders increased their market share of U.S. mortgage lending from 2% to 8% from 2010 to 2016. Using market-wide, loan-level data on U.S. mortgage applications and originations, we show that FinTech lenders process mortgage applications about 20% faster than other...

Developing country lenders are taking advantage of fintech tools to create fully digital loans on mobile phones. Using administrative and survey data, we study the take up and impacts of one of the most popular digital loan products in the world, M-Shwari in Kenya. While 34% of those eligible...

Using a unique FinTech data containing monthly individual-level consumption, investments, and payments, we examine how FinTech can lower investment barriers and improve risk-taking. Seizing on the rapid expansion of offline usages of Alipay in China, we measure individuals’ FinTech adoption by...

Blockchain technology provides decentralized consensus and potentially enlarges the contracting space using smart contracts with tamper-proofness and algorithmic executions. Meanwhile, generating decentralized consensus entails distributing information which necessarily alters the informational...

We study the spending response of first-time borrowers to an overdraft facility and elicit their preferences, beliefs, and motives through a FinTech application. Users increase their spending permanently, lower their savings rate, and reallocate spending from non-discretionary to discretionary...