This specialization is intended to familiarize learners with a broad range of financial technologies. While finance has always been at the forefront of technological innovation, the financial industry is changing rapidly in the face of new technology. In the past, at the forefront of innovation in finance were central governments and financial institutions. Today, information technology firms and professionals are leading innovation in the financial industry.

The Program

1. The Future of Payment Technologies
   In this course, you will learn new ways of making payments from consumer-to-business (C2B), from consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and from business-to-business (B2B). You will explore current payment system technologies to examine their strengths and weaknesses, and understand the ways technological innovation is changing these traditional systems. You’ll learn about new front-end innovations like digital wallets and mobile payments and also discover back-end innovations like tokenization, mobile money, and new payment infrastructure.
2. Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Explained
   In this course, you first discuss the technical underpinnings of blockchain and review key concepts such as decentralization and consensus algorithms. You then examine blockchain as an asset and review the dynamics of the cryptocurrency markets. Finally, you examine blockchain as a business solution, with a focus on understanding business cases in which blockchain does and does not make sense.
3. Raising Capital: Credit Tech, Coin Offerings, and Crowdfunding
   Advances in technology have both systematized and democratized consumers’ and business’ access to capital. In this course, you will explore the ways in which technology has transformed access to consumer credit and access to seed capital for business projects. You will examine disruptive technologies in credit scoring, raising capital through tokenization, and the evolution of crowdfunding for both debt and equity financing. You will also learn how to differentiate between crypto-based capital-raising models.
4. Innovations in Investment Technology: Artificial Intelligence
   You’ll consider the evolution of AI-driven online wealth management platforms, robo-advisors, and learn how they work and why they’re successful. Moving from human-based data-driven investing strategies to neural networks, you’ll assess the ability of artificial intelligence to make investment decisions and discover the role of AI and machine learning in making trading decisions.