Business trends & challenges in Islamic FinTech: A systematic literature review

Background: This systematic literature review (SLR) study is on Islamic financial technology (FinTech) business trends and challenges. It follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist. This research identifies the gaps in Islamic FinTech, which require further studies. Moreover, it highlights the issues raised during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods: This study is based on the FinTech business model (BM) classifications by Lee & Shin and Imerman & Fabozzi. Furthermore, the set of challenges used in this study are adopted from research by Lee & Shin and Li & Xu. The Scopus database was used to collect data using nine keywords. Articles and review papers published between 2016 and 2022 were included. Studies that were not published in English, and those with no ranking journals were excluded. The results were presented using bibliometric analysis. Results: The results showed 36 articles discussing Islamic FinTech business trends and challenges, and most of these studies are conducted on FinTech crowdfunding vertical BM. By contrast, the most dominant horizontal BMs are FinTech regulation and FinTech funding BMs. The top challenge found in this study is the regulation management challenges. Moreover, there are remarkable dominating articles and reviews published in 2020 and 2021 discussing COVID-19. Conclusions: This study concluded that many horizontal BMs were not covered in Islamic FinTech, especially horizontal technology BMs. Investment, property and insurance BMs are examples of unavailable articles. Islamic FinTech is considered a promising field due to the size of the opportunities it presents, the available capital, and the great demand for banking and financial products that comply with the Sharia. This study will help the Islamic FinTech industry grow and predict the demand, and provide an alternative to conventional banking FinTech and further boost the technology progress in the financial industry.