The rise of smartphones, social media, cryptocurrencies and digital assets has changed our lives profoundly over the last decade. In tandem, the relationship between governments, citizens and businesses has evolved, creating new sets of challenges and imbalances, but also opportunities.

This book focuses on the evolving digitisation of the financial industry and the impact this has on users. Particular attention is given to the emergence of new technologies such as blockchain, smart contracts and AI. The increasingly interconnected, data-driven digital economy, which includes many aspects of an individual's and organisation's life, has become a challenge for regulators, too. Matters are complex but also increasingly centralised, with a growing trend of distrust. Should we push for more decentralisation?

Delving into those technology areas that form part of the tectonic plate shift of our financial system we explore the pillars of money and payments that are at a turning point with the replacement of key infrastructural components necessary for the future of what we call the Digital Financial Ecosystem. Digital identity and data privacy also form part of this broader puzzle.

Ruth Wandhöfer operates at the nexus of finance, technology and regulation and is passionate about creating the digital financial ecosystem of the future. An expert in the field of banking, technology and regulation she is a public speaker and provides training and coaching for the finance industry as well as the Fintech community. Following her banking career at Citi, Ruth is now an independent Non-Executive Director on the boards of a bank, an exchange and two technology firms, a Partner at Gauss Ventures and Chair of the UK Payment Systems Regulator Panel. She is also an advisor of the City of London Corporation, the British Standards Institution and the European Third Party Provider Association (ETPPA). She is a Visiting Professor at Bayes (formerly CASS) Business School City University London where she gained her PhD as well as at the London Institute of Banking and Finance and occasional lecturer at Queen Mary London School of Law. She published two books: EU Payments Integration (2010) and Transaction Banking and the Impact of Regulatory Change (2014), both Palgrave Macmillan.

Hazem Danny Nakib is a financial and digital technology expert, having worked in different roles at the Royal Bank of Canada and in secondment at the Boston Consulting Group. Hazem is an honorary researcher at the University College London, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Associate at the London School of Economics Systemic Risk Centre, and visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge and sits on the Digital Strategic Advisory Board of the British Standards Institution. Hazem holds a BBA Management Specialist from the University of Toronto, BA in law from the University of Cambridge and BCL from the University of Oxford, as well as an MA (ad eundem) from the University of Oxford.