European Firms Welcome U.S. Tech Giants’ Digital Pay Push

European financial technology firms are embracing plans by U.S. tech giants to push into digital currencies and payments, brushing off potential rivalries, according to Bloomberg.

Speaking at Bloomberg’s Sooner Than You Think conference in London, Taavet Hinrikus, the chairman and co-founder of TransferWise, said he welcomed plans by Facebook to develop a new digital currency that could let users transfer money on its WhatsApp messaging app. "If anything, it’s going to increase our business, because it means more currencies where people need to send from one to the other, so we would love it," Hinrikus said, adding that he wasn’t worried about tech companies moving into banking.

Google, Apple and Facebook, have been expanding their businesses to include payment functions or a new currency. Facebook is reportedly working on rolling out a cryptocurrency, dubbed GlobalCoin, as soon as early next year and has met with regulators to discuss the launch.

"A lot of things keep me awake at night, competition is not one of them in our industry, neither of challenger banks nor technology companies," said Maximilian Tayenthal, the co-founder and chief financial officer of N26. The startup said that it had 3.5 million customers across Europe and has been targeting rapid expansion in the U.K. Tayenthal said he doesn’t see fintech as a market where "a winner takes all." Regarding the tech firms, he said "I don’t see any of these companies building a great product in a very highly regulated environment.

A more pressing issue for fintech companies is the regulatory and compliance hurdles they face as they continue to grow. German regulators told N26 in May that it needed to hire more staff and improve its anti-money laundering procedures. London-based Revolut has faced similar questions about its compliance controls from U.K. financial watchdogs. The Bank of England released a letter saying they had concerns about the compliance governance and stress-testing of the young fintech firms.