about what is probably the most discussed payments topic in the world : stablecoins and the challenge called “ libra ”. fintechs and bigtechs : new actors in the payments markets on many fronts, the digitalisation of payments is being driven by new players – fintech and bigtech firms. fintech players – that is, fledgling start - ups offering innovative technology - enabled financial services – also feel very much at home in the payments market. these newcomers start out “ on the greenfield ” and are able to build their systems from the ground up in a way that lets them leverage the opportunities offered by the platform economy and digitalisation. one example of this is smartphone banks or neobanks such as n26, which is a highly successful newcomer in germany ’ s banking market. another feature of these banks is that they no longer endeavour to “ produce ” everything themselves. on the contrary, they regard themselves more as digital platforms that seamlessly integrate the services of third parties – including those of other fintech players. in most cases, though, fintech firms ( still ) cannot pose a serious challenge to market incumbents. unsurprisingly, then, we are seeing more and more cooperative ventures between credit institutions and fintech players. these allow the former – the banks – to provide their customers with convenient, innovative services within a short space of time. examples in germany include customer identity verification by video, or services that make switching accounts more straightforward. the latter – the fintech businesses – get to tap into a large customer base and benefit from the confidence shown in them and from regulatory expertise, amongst other things. so the end result, more often than not, is a win - win situation for both the incumbents and the newcomers. by contrast, bigtech firms are a different kettle of fish altogether. these are the global tech businesses and platforms such as apple, amazon, google and facebook from the united states, as well as alibaba and tencent from china. bigtech players are transforming the financial sector and particularly the world of payments far more radically than the up - and - coming fintech firms ever could. you see, they can leverage a large existing customer base, technological expertise and sizeable financial resources. for instance, apple pay and google pay were launched last year at the point - of - sale in germany. the dominant force in e - commerce in germany has, for a long time now, been the us group amazon – which also offers a

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