From crowdfunding initiative to Fintech Hub: Lithuanian case

ENFinancial technologies (Fintech), expanding sharing economy, changing consumers’ behaviour, and decentralisation in business models create new business possibilities. Those developments have put consumers’ interest in the centre of financial services. The Brexit process has been another factor for increasing the attention of policymakers of European countries on Fintech development. Policymakers have to take into account new realities and adopt their policy following the trends. The ability to take a political leadership, involvement of political establishment, creating formal and informal administrative structures, and a spirit of cooperation among stakeholders are the main elements for the success of any political initiative. This chapter evaluates what kind of factors could define the country’s choice to make Fintech as one of the policy priorities and how Fintech could trigger reforms in other policy areas such as immigration, education, risk management, taxation, improvements in business climate for start-ups, ICT infrastructure, and financial literacy. Lithuanian experience has been taken as a case study for the analysis due to the pace of the developments of the Fintech eco-system. Since 2015, a number of Fintech companies in the country has doubled, Fintech programmes have been introduced in universities, business associations, and innovation, including blockchain technology, centres have been established, crowdfunding platforms have been included into public–private financial engineering schemes, and, last but not least, up to 4% of the world’s initial coin offerings (ICOs) have been initiated by Lithuanian entrepreneurs in 2017. Those facts prove that right political and administrative decisions could create a good basis for the development of a completely new eco-system of the economy. We recommend Transformation Dynamics in FinTech Dimitrios Salampas.