A process of internationalization by digital born globals : ‘Case study on fintech companies’

Abstract: Digital services have immeasurably transformed the world economy, and so people’s lives, over the past two decades. One industry where digitalization has been slower is the financial services. Nevertheless, this has changed in the past years with the emergence of fintech companies disrupting the traditional banks and payment solutions. Several studies have researched the internationalization process of digital born globals across different industries. However, due to how recent and emerging the fintech industry is, the area is understudied. To gain insight on the internationalization process of digital born globals within the fintech industry this study was based on an empirical multiple-case study including 4 fintech companies from Sweden and Finland. The main finding of this study is that fintech firms do not expand like other digital born globals but instead follow a more traditional, incremental internationalization process. We also observed that fintech companies used an online entry strategy initially allowing a fast entry process. In some cases, they also established offline presence. Overall, we hope to contribute to theory by giving insight on which factors that cause fintech companies to expand, how the internationalization process looks, how external partnerships might influence, and which challenges they might face.