Legal regulation of digital banking in Russia and foreign countries (European Union, USA, PRC)

Introduction: The article analyzes the legal regulation of digital banking in the European Union, USA, China, and Russia. The development of digital banking is shown to bring both benefits (innovation and creation of new jobs) and problems. The latter can be solved in some ways, including through strengthening supervision of the digital banking development. In this regard, a comparative analysis of the above issues is of particular importance. Purpose: to develop an understanding of the fundamentals of legal regulation in digital banking in the European Union, USA, China, and Russia based on the analysis of regulatory acts, scientific sources, and judicial precedents. Methods: empirical methods of comparison, description, interpretation; theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic; specific scientific methods: legal-dogmatic and the method of legal norms interpretation. Results: the study shows that the governments of the EU countries and the US see the solution to the problems associated with the legal regulation of digital banking in strengthening supervision of the digital banking development, which is expressed both in the adoption of new regulations and in the new powers of bodies exercising financial supervision (financial regulators); as for the Chinese government, until recently it was holding a position of non-interference. Conclusions: Russia lags behind the global giants of the Internet banking both in terms of the volume of digital monetary transactions and in the quality of legal regulation in the financial technology industry (FinTech), especially in the field of protecting the rights of consumers of digital financial services. In the European Union, depending on the type of activity, different regulatory acts (regulations and directives) are applied that regulate payment services, crowdfunding, insurance, cybersecurity, etc. In the field of legal regulation of cryptocurrencies, the EU has not yet adopted any specific rules. In the United States, digital banking is governed primarily by regulations and case law relating to traditional banking. At the federal level, there is no regulation of new FinTech industries, for example, cryptocurrency. However, the situation is different at the level of states: on October 9, 2017, the U.S. Treasury Commission on Unification of Law (ULC) developed the Uniform Regulation of Virtual-Currency Business Act (URVCBA). In China, the government did not hasten to regulate the provision of digital financial services; therefore, Internet finance providers in this country received much more freedom to work than traditional financial institutions. This trend has led to a significant expansion of population coverage (up to 40%). Moreover, despite the ban on private cryptocurrencies in China, the People’s Bank of China has publicly encouraged public use of blockchain technology.