Challenges of digitalization of financial transactions
Authors: Nikolić Ljubica 
Published: November 2023

The accelerated development of information technologies has fundamentally changed and improved the functioning of the global financial system, financial markets and economic exchange. Digitization of the financial sector has generated new financial opportunities, improved the quality of financial services, enabled faster and cheaper financial transactions. The challenges accompanying the digital transformation of finances are related to the regulation and security of using new digital products, the possible abuse of digital money transfers, as well as the emergence of technology-based decentralized finances, which may be a factor of factor of financial instability in direct copmpetition with the traditional financial sectors. This paper discusses the current digital transformation in traditional financial systems and decentralized digital finance (DeFi) as an emerging technology enabling decentralized exchange of new forms of digital money and payment instruments. The products and services of different DeFi platforms are constantly evolving and may become part of open decentralized finance, i.e. they can function as a single financial platform. Open Finance would enable the standardization of data exchange and interoperability of different DeFi systems, but there is still a fact that DeFi systems emerged as independent systems that are not part of a common conceptual framework. The term Open Finance refers to the future open financial system, as a continuation of the development initiated by open banking, with the aim of making financial resources of clients more accessible in a wider range of services and platforms. The Open Finance concept is also being developed within the traditional financial sector. The key condition for the development of open finance is user trust and "the creation of a wider single data market" (European Union, 2022: 5). The planned concept of open finance includes: a wider choice for customers through access to a more customized and personalized range of services and products; improving access to and use of financial services in all business segments; in line with data protection rules, providing consumers and businesses with greater transparency about how their data is used; facilitating data interoperability in open finance; embedding an open finance approach to client-centred services in a general cross-sectoral framework (European Union, 2022: 6). Adequate regulation of traditional finance and decentralized digital finance is the basis of financial and economic stability. Central banks and regulatory authorities should integrate digital innovations in complex and dynamic decentralized financial sectors in order to monitor transactions, preserve financial stability and prevent money laundering. One part this paper focuses on virtual currencies. From the viewpoint of central banks, virtual currencies are not money in the true sense of the word, for a number of reasons: they are not regulated by laws (as they have their own rules and payment systems); they do not fully perform all the functions of money; they are not a generally accepted means of exchange and payment; they currently have a limited number of users; etc. Yet, we cannot ignore their likely expansion in the future, nor the fact that a significant amount of money is invested in virtual currencies.