Failures will forge many bank and fintech bonds but the more strategic fintech bank mergers will be hard to explain away to the ACCC and its hopeful chair Rod Sims.

Thinking there are fintechs that will thrive in Australia and franchises worth preserving as independent companies, Sims will frown on the exit plans of many a fintech owner.

Speaking to The Australian Financial Review after a speech, Sims “said he was concerned the big four banks would pick off emerging fintech competitors, just like Google's acquisitions of YouTube and DoubleClick and Facebook's buyouts of Instagram and WhatsApp.

"Google and Facebook have done hundreds of acquisitions which can actually take out the legs of the competitors before they become competitors," Sims said.

"We may have the big banks starting to buy the fintechs."

"Is that what we want, the big banks buying the fintechs? I don't think we do."

"We have a very concentrated economy and we don't seem to be able to deal with that with the merger laws we've got."