BigTech firms have huge customer bases and data – and they’re now venturing into the financial services domain.

Technology intersects with financial services (FS) in multiple ways and is shaping tomorrow’s financial landscape. A significant change has occurred in recent years that we could summarize in one risky sentence: Facing challenges on multiple fronts, Open Banking may soon be leapfrogged by open experience, or Open X.

The highly disruptive next-generation digital banking environment offers a vast opportunity for a broad community of players – whether they’re established banks, challengers, or new entrants. The only surety is that nothing stands still and, right now, the industry is transitioning to a future phase known as Open X.

Marketplace lending continues to evolve, with agile firms operating at lower costs and innovating with technology at their core.

Now is a good time for commercial banks to proactively mitigate potential threats.

Structured collaboration will be the key to smashing the silos as well as mitigating the challenges of tomorrow.

Real-time data analytics capabilities can provide real edge to banks in a new ecosystem.

Financial services transparency as well as competitive and innovative products for customers are being promoted by regulatory initiatives such as Europe’s Revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2), mandates imposed by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and various global open-banking plans.

Open application programming interfaces (APIs) are fundamentally transforming payments business models by facilitating flexible, user-friendly, and tailored service propositions.