By Pascal Bouvier, Venture Partner, Santander InnoVentures (Santander Group's Global Fintech fund) and David Brear, Chief Thinker at Think Different Group

The integration and delivery of financial services is changing as new channels, products and partnerships are being explored. Banking as a Platform (BaaP) is one of the alternatives. Platform strategies require a radically different approach to how a business is architected. Owning an entire business stack may not be feasible nor desirable anymore.

In 2015, it became almost the expected cliché slide at any self respecting financial technology conference that someone would stand up and reference the interesting infographic highlighting the success of new ‘sharing economy’ players. The references, first discussed by Tom Goodwin on TechCrunch, illustrates how the middle men get cut out and how companies that take over the customer interface are the ones to gain.