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Financial Technologies, or abbreviated FinTech, is the name used for companies that develop or use the latest information technology in order to improve financial services. Their development requires considerable experience and knowledge from the existing financial market and banking. These companies focus on the end user in order to develop the best technological solutions for providing financial services by observing and studying their needs and habits, with the help of rapid technological development in the IT sector, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the slowness and imposition of strict conditions for the banking sector and its corresponding regulations. The emergence of such companies lately and their rapid penetration into the market has begun to threaten the position of traditional banks and even induce customers to leave the traditional financial institutions such as banks. Banks are becoming aware of the growing competition from Fintech companies and are trying to find satisfactory solutions to keep their customers. At the same time, in the era of general currency digitization and the development of crypto-currency, banks also face the challenge on the other side, which comes from the Central Banks. Central banks have begun to consider issuing their digital currency CBDC-the central bank digital currency, or the digital form of existing money as a legal means of payment, such as current banknotes and coins. This changes the direction of supply of money for the new digital economy from the state, that is, from the level of the Central Banks, which would change from different forms of crypto-currency, such as bitcoin etc. at CBDC. These banks are facing new challenges because the Central Banks can become competitors to commercial banks in the segment of deposit and payment transactions. This sets new tasks and regulatory challenges to the banking system in terms of carefully regulating the relationship of the Central Banks as regulatory institutions and systems of commercial banks in the future.

Employee competencies are the key to success in all economic activities, particularly in the service sector. Numerous studies of elements and models of employee competency in different sectors, including the tourism sector, support this conclusion. However, little attention has been directed to the specific competencies of employees working in specialised forms of tourism, i.e. the so-called thematic tourism, including religious tourism. In this paper, we attempt to highlight these specificities and propose an employee competency model in the field of religious tourism. The developed framework may serve as a starting point for further research. Likewise, the proposed solution may become an integral element of policies in the field of promotion and development of religious tourism in Serbia and abroad.

Computational methods are, among other things, widely used in operational research. Operational research is a complex interdisciplinary field that deals with the problems of decision-making in real conditions, considering all the factors that affect the problem directly or indirectly, in order to find the best, i.e. optimal solution. As there is a growing need for continuous process improvement, there is a growing presence of operational research methods for various real-life problems. The transportation problem is one of the segments of research within operational research. It aims to determine the optimal program of distribution of a certain type of commodity from sources (points of origin) to destinations. The sources are the places where the commodity leaves (the warehouse), while the destinations are the ending points to which the commodity should be transported (in our case -the store). As a criterion for optimizing the transportation of goods, the request for minimizing the total transportation costs is most often taken. In the case of transportation problem, the objective function expresses the total transportation costs, while the limiting conditions are determined by the supply of individual sources (warehouses), i.e. the demand of individual destinations (stores). This paper discusses the possibility of applying operational research methods in the service sector. The aim of the research part of the paper is to find the optimal solution for real data of a given problem, simulating different conditions and constraints. An experimental analysis was performed for the problem of warehouse operations, and the goal was to minimize the costs of transporting goods. Two different methods were applied in order to determine the optimal solution. Based on the obtained results and their analysis, conclusions were made as to whether the problem was solved.