Financial technology sits at an unusually productive intersection for researchers: it combines core questions in monetary and financial economics with genuinely novel institutional structures — digital payment rails, algorithmic lending, decentralized finance — that didn’t exist when much of the field’s foundational theory was developed. This makes fintech one of the more dynamic subfields for authors looking to make a distinctive contribution.
Digital Payments and Financial Inclusion
Mobile money and digital payment systems have expanded financial access dramatically in regions historically underserved by traditional banking, generating a substantial and still-growing body of research on how digital payment adoption affects savings behavior, business formation, and household resilience to economic shocks.
Algorithmic Credit Scoring and Lending
The use of alternative data and machine learning in credit decisions raises both efficiency questions (does algorithmic scoring genuinely improve credit allocation) and equity questions (does it introduce or amplify discriminatory outcomes) — an area where economics, data science, and regulatory policy increasingly intersect.
Peer-to-Peer and Marketplace Lending
Research on platforms that connect borrowers directly with individual or institutional lenders continues to examine questions around information asymmetry, default prediction, and how these platforms’ incentive structures compare to traditional banking intermediation.
Cryptocurrency and Decentralized Finance
Beyond price volatility (which has arguably received disproportionate research attention relative to its practical significance), more substantive open questions concern the actual economic function of decentralized finance protocols, their systemic risk implications, and how they interact with — or evade — existing financial regulation.
Regulatory Design for Fast-Moving Technology
Regulators worldwide are grappling with how to oversee fintech innovation without stifling genuinely beneficial developments, creating rich research opportunities around regulatory sandboxes, cross-border regulatory arbitrage, and the appropriate scope of financial regulation in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
FinTech’s Effect on Traditional Financial Institutions
Incumbent banks’ competitive and strategic responses to fintech disruption — through partnership, acquisition, or in-house innovation — offer a rich area for management and strategy researchers studying incumbent response to disruptive technological change specifically within financial services.
Where the Open Gaps Remain
- Long-run effects of fintech-driven financial inclusion on household welfare, beyond short-term adoption metrics
- Comparative regulatory approaches across countries and their effectiveness
- The distributional effects of algorithmic financial decision-making across demographic groups
- Systemic risk implications of increasingly interconnected fintech and traditional financial infrastructure
Why This Field Rewards Interdisciplinary Contributions
Fintech research benefits particularly from authors who can bridge economic theory, empirical methods, and genuine institutional knowledge of the technology itself — a combination that remains relatively scarce and makes well-executed fintech papers particularly valuable contributions to the literature.
For ongoing research and data on global fintech developments, the Bank for International Settlements publishes regularly updated analysis relevant to this research area.
Researching the economics of financial technology? Check the journal’s scope and submit your manuscript through the paper submission page.