New Banks in th 4th Industrial Revolution: A Review and Typology

The banking industry is strongly influenced by Industry 4.0 with the rise of digital native banks that are changing the global competition lowering costs and entry barriers. Despite the relevance of the phenomenon, there is no consensus on the concept of digital native banks. For this reason, the paper aims to reconstruct, to classify and to analyze the topic, building up a typology of digital native banks. Studies on the topic are identified through a review process on scientific and professional sources. The typology is then finetuned through focus group and in-depth interviews. The results verify that there are five types of digital native banks (Beta Banks; Neobanks; Challenger Banks; Big Tech’s Banks; Retailer’s Banks) based on five dimensions (License; Actors; Approach; Banking Market Experience; Group Core Business). The theoretical contribution of the paper is the construction of a typology of digital native banks that are little analyzed in the academic literature. From a managerial point of view, the paper allows a better comprehension of the competitors and of the new market opportunities in the banking industry. The originality of the paper is the wide and holistic approach used to analyze a nascent field that allows to open-up new lines for the academic research.