We study the efficiency implications of funding directly provided by consumers. Intermediaries fail to finance all efficient projects, and crowdfunding can improve efficiency. Whereas intermediaries value projects based on cash flows, consumers also receive a consumption benefit. Unique to crowdfunding is the ability of consumers to commit to pay for the benefit, and the degree to which they can do so determines its efficiency. We discuss the implications of introducing a resale market for consumers’ claims, as in the case of initial coin offerings, and the speculation that necessarily accompanies such markets. We provide testable and policy-related implications.

We study the impact of FinTech competition in payment services when a monopolist bank uses payment data to learn about consumers’ credit quality. Competition from FinTech payment providers disrupts this information spillover. The bank’s price for payment services and its loan offers are affected. FinTech competition promotes financial inclusion, may hurt consumers with a strong bank preference, and has an ambiguous effect on the loan market. Both FinTech data sales and consumer data portability increase bank lending, but the effects on consumer welfare are ambiguous. Under mild conditions, consumer welfare is higher under data sales than with data portability.

We examine how the payment processing role of banks affects their lending activity. In our model, banks operate in separate zones, and issue claims to entrepreneurs who purchase some inputs outside their own zone. Settling bank claims across zones incurs a cost. In equilibrium, a liquidity externality arises when zones are sufficiently different in their outsourcing propensities—a bank may restrict its own lending because it needs to hold liquidity against claims issued by another bank. Our work highlights that the disparate motives for interbank borrowing (investing in productive projects and managing liquidity) can have different effects on efficiency.