Several senior officials at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) believe that tech giants should be followed in a special way by financial regulators.

Central banks will have to deal specifically with financial regulators. In a message from BIS officials, in an article in the institution's newsletter on Monday, tech giants are throwing unprecedented challenges at financial regulators around the world. The BIS plays a key role in international financial regulation. What particularly worries economists at the Basel-based institution is the meteoric growth of tech giants in the financial sector and the threats it can pose to financial stability and data privacy. By exploiting their users' data and taking advantage of network effects, giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tencent or Alibaba have acquired unprecedented market shares. In China, for example, Alipay and Tenpay (WeChat Pay) together hold no less than 94% of the mobile payment market.

The authors of the message suggest that central banks work closely with competition authorities as well as those responsible for data regulation. They also call for specific rules based on entities and not on activities. Currently, financial service providers must hold licenses for specific industries.