Cross-Border Risks as an Impact Factor for International Fintech Business Models

Abstract

Research background: Cross-border activities for FinTech companies in several markets bring them completely new opportunities and drive the appetite for new deals, but the complexity of doing business internationally is often underestimated: many risks, which have an influence of business models, can be determined. The emphasis of this research is on those risks that can be brought into particularly correlation with the cross-border activities of a FinTech company and at the same time influence the whole business activity of it. Purpose of the article: The aim of this research is to find out what kind of risks corresponds to so called cross-border risk-group and is the most common for internationally designed FinTech business models. Additionally, to determine those business model areas, which are influenced by cross-border risks the most and must be created with focus on avoiding, mitigating or sharing these risks. Methods: To achieve the goal the authors interviewed representatives of different FinTech companies. In these interviews, experts were asked to describe the most significant risks and to assess the importance of them for each business model dimension by using the Likert’s scale as well as to explain the dependencies and the consequences of their influence on different business model areas. Findings & Value added: The result of this research forms the basis for conclusions about the most significant cross-border risks and their impact on dimensions of a business model as well as makes recommendations possible for those FinTech-enthusiasts who are going to model their FinTech business internationally.