Maintaining a level playing field when Big Tech disrupts the financial services sector

Abstract

Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (the “GAFAs”) have been slow to disrupt the financial services sector, but they are likely to do so in the coming years by using their control of important customer access points such as mobile operating systems, search engines, app stores, and marketplaces. This paper discusses these issues in the context of competition law enforcement and the emerging UK and EU regulatory regimes aiming to curb the GAFAs’ market power. The new rules can ensure that consumers will benefit from the innovations of the GAFAs and others without suffering the long-run effects of their further accumulation of market power. The new rules can ensure that the GAFAs do not benefit from an asymmetry of regulatory obligations compared to their financial services competitors, and that the GAFAs cannot leverage their market power from core activities into financial services whereby their financial services competitors are hindered in reacting.