finance contributes to society in four principal ways: it matches lenders with borrowers, helping to direct savings to their most effective use; it enables individuals to manage personal finances over a lifetime; it helps manage the inevitable risks in life; and the payments system facilitates buying and selling, as well as the paying of wages and salaries. These are the sorts of things provided by the financial industry that are used by ordinary people and businesses, and their benefits make obvious sense. But those fundamental services make up a small fraction of the activity carried out by most institutions in the wider financial system. Overwhelmingly, their activity consists of trading. As Kay writes, “to an extent that staggers the imagination, they deal with each other.”

http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/25/the-fundamentals-of-fintech/