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Abstract Recent studies suggest that Uber and other tech start‐ups disrupt markets through regulatory entrepreneurship. This practice describes how such companies operate outside of regulation or in legal gray areas before mobilizing their customers in support of regulatory change. Financial technology (FinTech) is sometimes called the “Uber of banking,” but banking reveals different political dynamics than the car‐for‐hire sector. Exploring the rise of online‐only banks in the UK and Germany, this article finds that start‐ups such as Starling, Monzo, and N26 challenged incumbents without breaking or remaking regulation. The regulatory entrepreneurship approach, which sees FinTech as a difficult case, and the state world of regulatory innovation, which views policy‐makers as seizing the opportunity created by new technology to reassess their relationship with incumbents, help to explain these findings. Its conclusions have relevance for wider debates about the governance of health care and legal services and the politics of disruption more generally.
Dermot Hodson (Thu,) studied this question.