Does cultural economics affect country’s competitiveness?

Abstract

Financial technology (FinTech) has evolved from a peripheral back-office concern into one of the most consequential forces reshaping global financial services, generating a rapidly expanding and increasingly fragmented body of scholarship. This study synthesizes and extends recent large-scale bibliometric investigations of the FinTech literature to trace its intellectual structure, identify its most influential knowledge hubs, and chart the trajectory of emerging technological themes. Drawing on performance-analysis indicators (publication and citation trends, leading journals, countries, and institutions) and science-mapping techniques (keyword co-occurrence, thematic clustering, and strategic diagramming) commonly implemented through VOSviewer, Bibliometrix, and Harzing's Publish or Perish, the review consolidates evidence from Scopus- and Web of Science-indexed corpora spanning the 1970s to 2025. The findings show that FinTech publications have grown at an accelerating, near-exponential rate since 2015, with the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and India functioning as dominant knowledge hubs. The intellectual structure clusters around four recurring domains: blockchain and cryptocurrency, digital payments and financial inclusion, regulatory technology (RegTech) and governance, and artificial-intelligence-enabled financial services, with trust, risk, and technology-acceptance constructs forming a persistent theoretical backbone. Motor themes with high centrality and density include blockchain, digital payments, and AI/machine-learning applications, whereas central bank digital currencies, embedded finance, and generative-AI-driven advisory services remain emerging but still peripheral clusters. The paper closes with academic, managerial, and policy implications, study limitations, and a forward-looking research agenda centred on decentralized finance, open banking, sustainability-linked FinTech, and the governance of algorithmic decision-making.

Keyword : FinTech; Bibliometric Analysis; Intellectual Structure; Blockchain; Artificial Intelligence; RegTech; Digital Finance; Science Mapping