Regulating Fintech in Russia: The Issues Raised from the Absence of Legal Definition

Introduction. Financial technology or fintech is one of the most discussed problems of the modern digitalization. Particular attention is paid to describing what the fintech industry is, how it relates to traditional financial regulation and to what extent the official recognition of financial technologies can affect economic regulation and the global economy. Theoretical Basis. Methods. The article examines the concept of fintech and the regulatory as- pects of the so-called “sandbox”, which allows, being based on the comparative legal method and the method of legal expertise, to extrapolate specific problems to the entire situation in the field of fintech regulation. The author offers an overview of the main stages of the formation of legislation on financial technologies and examines the role of the Bank of Russia in this process. Results. Arguing about the consequences of such a concentration of regulatory mechanisms in the banking sector, the author thinks about the actual leveling of digitalization of banks with banking financial technologies in the science and practice of the Russian Federation. Based on a brief review of academic approaches to the definition of financial technologies, the author draws a number of parallels that allow one to outline the reasons for judicial errors and the reasons for excluding changes in fintech legislation from the attention of domestic courts, and draws conclu- sions about the general and particular consequences of the current situation. Discussion and Conclusion. During the study, the author comes to the conclusion that the scien- tific opinion about the development of the fintech industry and the need for its regulation in the Russian Federation is based on a narrow understanding of fintech itself and the peculiarities of introducing financial technologies into the practice of services. The author believes that the par- adigm for the development of the domestic fintech market is focused on the so-called banking fintech, when financial technologies are consumed and built into the ecosystem of specific banks’ activities and are not provided by non-banking entities. This leads to the fact that legislative regu- lation focuses on the development of banking law and, at the same time, excludes from the atten- tion of the legislator and the main regulator – the Central Bank of the Russian Federation – other areas, such as, for example, insurance or non-banking investment. This situation makes it pos- sible to ask the question of how much the image of fintech, formed in domestic law, corresponds to its actual state and market development, and in what proportion is the process of digitalization of traditional banking services understood by fintech.