Analysis of the FinTech market in V4 countries and emerging economies of Eurasia

This master thesis examines the growth of the FinTech sector in the Visegrad Four countries and selected Eurasian economies. The aim of the work is to analyze the markets of both groups of countries with respect to different regulatory and economic conditions, to understand variations in regulation, to assess economic factors, and to identify the determinants of FinTech sector growth in the given countries. In the theoretical part, the concept of FinTech is defined, its historical development is outlined, and the sector is segmented into six main areas. The second part of the thesis focuses on the selection of the examined regions, their historical and economic characteristics, and current trends in the development of the FinTech industry. The methodological framework of the thesis is based on data from the Crunchbase database for the period 2013 - 2023, including the number of newly established startups and the volume of their financing. Most academic literature typically examines FinTech as an independent variable influencing other economic phenomena. However, this thesis analyzes the growth of the FinTech sector as a dependent variable, determined by a set of economic, institutional, regulatory, and demographic factors. To test the four formulated hypotheses, the GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) is applied using the RStudio Cloud environment. The results show that in both groups of countries, gross domestic product, internet penetration, and mobile service penetration have a positive and statistically significant impact on the development of the FinTech sector. Other examined variables proved to be statistically insignificant, or exhibited differing effects across the regions. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the determinants of FinTech sector growth in diverse geopolitical and economic contexts.