Banks as platforms versus platforms as banks

Abstract

The essay focuses on the new scenarios that are emerging in the banking sector as a result of the advent and intensification of the increasingly para-banking and lending activities of Big Tech. The author points out the reasons why one cannot actually speak of a clash taking place between two models, that of the bank that acts as a platform versus that of the platform that acts as a bank; moreover, he emphasises how it is also unlikely that this will take place in the short term. What he does consider extremely probable, with the risks of marginalisation of classic banking institutions that this entails, is that the BAAS dynamic - which is indeed underway - will be accentuated, and that this will, however, end up being an element that facilitates the polarisation of the major institutions' operations within the platforms. The risks, in other words, is that if not an envelopment manoeuvre, then at least a 'capture' of the banks and many aspects of their traditional activities by Big Tech will take place.