Fintechs: a global bibliometric analysis and research trends

Abstract

This article aims to present a bibliometric study of research involving the concept of fintechs from the past 30 years (1991-2020). For this study, the bibliographical data was extracted from Scopus. Among the main results that were found, three stand out. Firstly, this article describes a general panorama of research involving fintechs from the last 30 years in the subareas ‘Business, Management and Accounting’ and ‘Economics, Econometrics and Finance’. Secondly, we detected three generations of research related to this field of study. They are the discovery (1991-2006), the development (2007-2016), and the expansion (2017-2020). Also, we highlighted connections between the three generations, as well as the evolutionary process of the subjects that were addressed in these different generations. The third result was the identification of six themes that represent research trends for the future, which are: ‘banking & financial services’, ‘electronic services & ‘e-finance’, ‘consumer behaviour’, ‘mobile services’, ‘risk’ and ‘cryptocurrency’.

Keywords

• Fintechs
• Digital finance
• Mobile payment
• Bibliometrics
• Generations
• Research trends