The Impact of AI on Cross-Border Financial Operations in Fintech: A Legal and Ethical Perspective

Investigating how fintech professionals understand the operational, legal, and ethical repercussions associated with the employment of AI in cross-border financial industries enables this paper to evaluate whether or not fintech professionals support regulatory intervention. This research is built on the Technology Acceptance Model and Institutional Theory, and is based on a quantitative design involving 150 professionals from six countries who filled out a survey. The statistical analysis results suggest that familiarity with AI is a strong predictor of perceived operational benefits and support for regulation, and that concerns about ethics play a role in supporting regulation most strongly. Legal concerns, however, also influence regulatory preferences to a lesser extent. This highlights a disconnect between the operational optimism and governance apprehension, and indicates that an awareness of the capabilities of the AI does not circumvent professionals’ worries about the complexity of fairness, accountability, and compliance. These results highlight the need for harmonized, ethically aligned regulatory frameworks to both enable and steer the progression of AI-driven innovation and accountability in the global finance, in which the systems are deeply intertwined and dependent on each other.