Today, the Ukrainian experience demonstrates a completely different logic. Companies create a product, test it in the fields, and the state later legitimizes this successful experience.
I have gone from operational management of complex technological projects to strategic market analysis. In particular, we actively implemented this approach during my work in the past with the fintech company bill_line. And today I see how this model is becoming our main export product.
Technology is faster than bureaucracy
Open banking, asset tokenization, instant payments, in each of these areas the technology stack is developing faster than the legal department of any ministry has time to update the amendments.
The price of waiting for business today is critical. While 50% of the market is frozen in anticipation of final clarifications on PSD2 or MiCA, leaders are already designing UX scenarios that the user will get used to. In six months, those catching up will have to not just implement technology, but break the habits of customers that have already been formed by competitors.
4 mechanisms how business today is changing the rules of the game:
- Regulatory Sandbox. A tool of the NBU that allows you to test innovations in a safe environment. This is the shortest path from a bold experiment to a state standard;
- Direct dialogue. Joint working groups allow businesses to literally dictate the wording of draft laws, making them suitable for real life, not just for paper;
- Economic arguments. When technology demonstrates a real reduction in budget losses or acceleration of capital turnover, the bureaucratic machine starts moving many times faster;
- Creating reality. When you have a working product with millions of transactions, your technical standards are likely to form the basis of future regulations.
Today, innovation in fintech is not about circumventing rules, but about creating them through value generation. In a world where 80% of payments are processed in two seconds, a law cannot afford to take years to be adopted.
Exporting experience, not just software
While European regulations go through multi-year cycles of discussions in Brussels, Ukraine is demonstrating a pace that the world will have to get used to. Our advantage is in the speed of reaction.
Companies that are laying the foundation for regulations within the country today gain uniqueness for global expansion. They already have skills that cannot be acquired in the conditions of ready-made norms:
- The ability to prove the safety of innovations without official checklists;
- The ability to really influence the architecture of the financial landscape;
- Experience in product management in the zone of anticipatory regulation.
The regulator is no longer the only author of rules. The real architect of the financial world is the one who creates a working product. Ukrainian fintech is the ability to build trust where laws are still being written. This is what makes us competitive.
The topic of interaction between business and government is key for the modern market (https://ua.korrespondent.net/business/4827464-artem-liashanov-vid-vykonavtsia-do-dyryhenta-yak-shi-zminuiie-pidpryiemnytske-myslennia). Artem Lyashanov discusses in more detail how fintech startups are beginning to dictate the rules of the game in his column.
The real architect of the financial world is the one who creates a working product. — Artem Lyashanov