Blockchain Technology Adoption for Disrupting FinTech Functionalities: A Systematic Literature Review for Corporate Management, Supply Chain, Banking Industry, and Stock Markets

Abstract

Blockchain technology (BCT) is regarded as one of the most important and disruptive technologies in Industry 4.0. However, no comprehensive study addresses the contributions of BCT adoption (BCA) on some special business functionalities projected as financial variables like BCA integrity, transparency, etc. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to close this theoretical gap and determine how BCA has contributed to the four business sectors that were selected since FinTech had the greatest potential in these domains. The PRISMA approach, a systematic literature review model, was used in this work to make sure that the greatest number of studies on the topic were accessed. The PRISMA model’s output helped identify relevant publications, and an analysis of these studies served as the foundation for this paper’s findings. The findings reveal that BCA for companies with a disrupting financial technology (FinTech) attitude can help in securing corporate transaction transparency; offer knowledge, same-data, and information sharing; enhance fidelity, integrity, and trust; improve organizational procedures; and prevent fraud with cyber-hacking protection and fraudulence suspension. Moreover, blockchain’s smart contract utilization feature offers ESG and sustainability functionality. This paper’s novelty is the projection to four business sectors of the three-layer research sequence: (i) financial variables operated as BCA functionalities, (ii) issues, risks, limitations, and opportunities associated with the financial variables, and (iii) implications, theoretical contributions, questions, potentiality, and outlook of BCA/FinTech issues. And the ability of managers or practitioners to reference this sequence and make decisions on BCA matters is considered a key contribution. The proposed methodology provides business practitioners with valuable insights to reevaluate their economic challenges and explore the potential of blockchain technology to address them. This study combined a systematic literature review (SLR) with qualitative analysis as part of a hybrid research approach. Quantitative analysis was carried out on all 835 selected papers in the first step, and qualitative analysis was carried out on the top-cited papers that were screened. The current work highlights the key challenges and opportunities in established blockchain implementations and discusses the outlook potentiality of blockchain technology adoption. This study will be useful to managers, practitioners, researchers, and scholars.