Course overview
FinTech products are increasingly dependent on digital platforms and infrastructures. Managers can no longer “plug in” and hope for the best.
When companies launch mobile payment apps, they typically build on payment rails owned by Visa and Mastercard. When they deploy AI-powered features, they depend on foundation models from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google. When they scale using the cloud, they rely on Amazon's or Microsoft's infrastructure. Modern digital products represent complex technological assemblages built on infrastructures and platforms, typically owned and controlled by third parties. While these dependencies enable unprecedented speed and innovation, they also expose companies to strategic risks: vendor lock-in, data and rent extraction, and loss of competitive differentiation. Moreover, third-party dependencies create regulatory complexities, simultaneously offering compliance expertise while introducing new jurisdictional and liability risks.
‘FinTech Infrastructures and Innovation’ from the University of Edinburgh Business School gives you the skills and frameworks necessary to balance the risks and rewards of digital innovation in the modern platform economy. You will study this through the lens of the FinTech sector, but the frameworks and skills you develop generalise to digital products of all kinds. You will learn to look beyond individual technologies to the infrastructures and platforms that make digital products work, to the policies and regulations that shape them, and learn how to respond strategically as the landscape shifts.
What you’ll learn
Upon finishing this course, you will have developed a board-ready understanding of what sits behind today’s financial innovation—and what it means for your organisation—as well as a set of frameworks and concepts for evaluating infrastructure and platform that generalize to digital products more generally. The course helps you build a structured way to evaluate new products and capabilities, by spotting the dependencies that often decide whether an initiative scales, stalls, or creates unintended exposure.
Across the course, you will strengthen your ability to interpret the FinTech landscape through the lenses of platforms and infrastructures. You will learn how platforms create value and power through ecosystems; how banking and lending are being rebuilt through open banking, embedded finance, and new entrants; how machine learning is changing the infrastructure of modelling, risk, pricing, fraud, and customer operations; and how regulation and public policy shape what is viable, permissible, and sustainable.
By the end, you will be able to anticipate the business impact of emerging innovations, assess implications for market structure and operating models, and shape strategic responses to disruption that are grounded in real-world constraints—technical, organisational, and regulatory.
Why this course matters now for FinTech businesses
FinTech has moved from experimentation to infrastructure. Decisions about platforms, data architecture, partnerships, AI, and compliance are now strategic choices that affect margin, resilience, speed to market, and trust. At the same time, regulators are raising expectations around consumer protection, explainability, cybersecurity, operational resilience, and financial inclusion—making “move fast and break things” an expensive philosophy.
This course gives you the clarity to ask better questions of your teams, vendors, and advisors, and to judge trade-offs with precision. You will be better placed to decide where to build, where to partner, where to modernise, and how to position your organisation as standards and policy evolve.
Who should attend
This course is designed for business leaders, policy makers, and entrepreneurs who need to understand and evaluate technology implementation and digital transformation in financial services, without getting lost in jargon. It is particularly relevant if you lead strategy, innovation, transformation, product, risk, regulation, or technology decisions, or if you are building or investing in FinTech propositions that depend on platforms, data, and compliance.
How you'll learn
This is an MBA online course delivered over 12 weeks, with approximately 100 hours of study.
The course combines clear, concept-led teaching with seminar discussions grounded in practical case studies, so you can translate ideas into decisions you would actually make at work. You will learn through a mix of video lectures and short exercises, with live online tutorials typically scheduled 12–2pm on weekdays, most commonly Tuesdays or Wednesdays (final timings confirmed within eight weeks of the course start date). During each tutorial, you’ll have the opportunity to review the learning thus far and also work on specific cases or exercises with your fellow students.
Participants will be joining the existing Online MBA cohort, which provides an excellent opportunity for networking and idea exchange. The pace is designed to work alongside a full-time role but assumes steady weekly engagement.
Assessment and certification
Assessment is designed to mirror real executive work: making sense of a digital product, communicating insight clearly, and recommending action. You will select a digital product and map its key technological and infrastructural components, deliver a 15-minute recorded presentation analysing what you find (40%), then write a concise, persuasive memo to a senior decision-maker recommending strategic changes to the infrastructural stack (60%).
Successful completion earns you a University of Edinburgh Business School certificate, plus 10 Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF credits), equivalent to 5 European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) credits. These credits can be put towards the University of Edinburgh MBA or Online MBA.
Course impact
You will leave with a sharper understanding of how FinTech innovations actually function in the real world, and a stronger ability to evaluate them as a leader. That means clearer judgment on where value and risk sit in a platform ecosystem, more realistic expectations of AI and data-driven finance, and a firmer grasp of how policy and regulatory trade-offs shape competitive dynamics. Most importantly, you will be able to turn that insight into practical strategic responses—grounded recommendations you can take back to your organisation and act on.
Course lead – Dr Taylor Spears
Dr. Taylor C. Spears is a Lecturer in Financial Technology and Organisations at the University of Edinburgh Business School. He was formerly a Chancellor's Fellow at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and Programme Director for the MSc in Finance, Technology, and Policy. His research focuses on the impact of novel technologies on financial markets and institutions.
Dr. Spears earned his PhD in Financial Sociology from the University of Edinburgh, examining the modelling culture practiced by derivatives practitioners active in the Libor derivatives markets. He brings practical industry experience from his role as Head of Risk Analytics at Level E Research, an Edinburgh-based FinTech firm, where he led regulatory compliance and developed analytics tools for fund performance attribution and risk management.
His current research examines the use of synthetic data in financial services, the dynamics of regulatory circumvention in the decentralized finance, and the evolution of risk management practices in the derivatives markets. He has published on financial modeling cultures and technological innovation in venues including Economy and Society, Social Studies of Science, and the Industrial and Corporate Change. He holds an MSc with distinction from the University of Sussex (as a Fulbright Scholar) and a BS summa cum laude from Arizona State University in Economics and Mathematics.
Course dates
2 September 2026 – 25 November 2026
Course fees
£2000
Application terms
Applications are accepted until 5pm UK time on Tuesday 18 August 2026.
Our participants typically hold a 2:1 honours degree or higher. We do, however, take a holistic view of every application. If your academic background does not meet these specific criteria, your application may still be considered if supported by a good professional track record.
Successful applicants must also evidence a minimum of three years’ management experience. Before applying, please ensure you have gathered all the required supporting documents, including a CV and your sponsor letter (if applicable). For further details, please see the application form.
Cancellation requests must be received by 9am UK time on Wednesday 9 September 2026 to qualify for a full refund. After this date, a refund will no longer be possible.
For more information about this course, please email us: executive@business-school.ed.ac.uk