In this article, the author argues that U.S. regulation laws have help slow down FinTech growth in the United States, while such investment has grown in Europe and in Asia.
First, I feel that the article’s headline is a bit misleading. Just based on the headline, one might think that FinTech in the US was being actively crushed by a plethora of oppressive government regulations. However, the article, if anything, argues that the problem isn’t with the number of regulations, or even what the regulations are, but that the speed of the FinTech industry has trouble working with the inconsistent, slow, and currently confused regulation agencies. The writer does not name specific regulations that he feels are hurting FinTech, only mentioning stuff like, “policies and taxes,” which honestly, is not terribly useful for the reader.
The writer does seem to imply that one solution for the U.S. is to pass sweeping federal rules to encourage FinTech growth (like in Europe), instead of letting each state come up with it’s own rules. As far as the confusion factor, while the writer does not explicitly accuse the Trump administration for sabotaging efforts to grow FinTech, it does seem clear that he is frustrated by Trump’s inability to give a straight answer and general avoidance of the topic.
The topic of this article is quite interesting as the fintech industry continues to grow. I agree with your point that such regulation for fintech is much better suited at the federal level versus the state level. If the push for state level regulation continues, it seems that fintech would have issues expanding or serving its customer properly considering there could be different regulations in every state. Time will tell, but a push towards state regulation seems as if it would halt the fintech industry or at least prove to be an interesting roadblock.