Financial regulators urgently need to get a grip on ‘Big Tech’: BIS

LONDON: Central banks and financial regulators urgently need to get to grips with the growing influence of ‘Big Tech’, according to top officials from central bank umbrella group the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Global watchdogs are increasingly wary that the huge amounts of data controlled by groups such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Alibaba could allow them to reshape finance so rapidly that it destabilises entire banking systems.

The BIS, in a paper led by its head Agustin Carstens, pointed to examples such as China where the two big tech payment firms Alipay and WeChat Pay now account for 94% of the mobile payments market.