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Exploring the Research Fronts of Fintech: A Scientometric Analysis

Financial technology (fintech), or digital innovations in the financial sector, is expected to enhance access to financial services and promote innovations for more inclusive and sustainable futures. To provide an up-to-date discussion on FinTech, the paper aims to map out the main countries, publications, institutions, and topics of the related research based on the Web of Science (WoS) database. The findings based on the 494 articles show that publications have experienced rapid growth since 2015 and that fintech research has involved several disciplines, such as e-commerce, finance, sustainability studies, information management, economics, business, organization law, etc. Also, several U.S., Chinese, U.K., and Australian institutions have been shown to be prominent in hosting such interdisciplinary work. In addition, five main research clusters include (a) digitizationor even ecosystem-based innovations, (b) internet finance and its regulation, (c) cryptocurrencies and blockchains, (d) financial inclusion and trust, and (e) AI and regulation technologies (or regtech). By showing the research fronts of fintech, the scientometric analysis also highlights the research gap at the intersections of green finance and smart finance.


INTRODUCTION
Defined as " [d]igitally enabled innovation in the financial sector" by the United Nations 2019 Financing for Sustainable Development Report (FSDR), financial technology (fintech) have the potentials in enhancing financial access and narrowing financial gaps for many people and smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), if such potentials can be balanced by the need for consumer protection, integrity and stability [1].
Expected by policy makers such as EU [2] to lower national barriers and increase competition in domains such as online banking, payment, fund transfer, peer-to-peer lending, and personal investment services, over 80 percent of main global banks have begun some partnerships with fintech [1]. Fintech promises digital transformation of the financial sector [12].
Innovations in fintech may be beneficial for more inclusive and sustainable development. For instance, Internet fintech platforms Ant Financial launched a blockchain remittance app for migrant workers to transfer money from Hong Kong to the Philippines, promising to lower waiting times, exchange rate, and transaction fees [3]. For another, in India, by linking its digital identity (Aadhaar), government-sponsored bank accounts (Jan Dhan), and mobile numbers, the JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) initiative has successfully created a low-cost access to financial services that are otherwise out of reach for many Indians [1]. Nevertheless, these innovations also raise concerns regarding personal data ownership and possible misuse [1].
The discussions on Fintech appears to be growing, and some literature review articles do exist [4][5][6][7][8][9]. However, most of them focused on one aspect or one element of fintech, such as financial service, crowdfunding, blockchain, regulatory environment, underlying risks, information technology services, etc. Little has been done to provide a comprehensive and systematic review. To provide an up-to-date discussion on FinTech, the paper aims to map out the main countries, publications, institutions, and topics of the related research based on the Web of Science (WoS) database.

Data and Methods
To capture the relevant literature on the topic of fintech, this scientometric analysis starts with the Web of Science (WoS) "Advanced Search" query designed as below:  TS = ("Fintech" OR "Financial computing" OR "Digital finance*" OR "RegTech" OR "Internet finance*" OR "financial technolog*") A total of 494 articles were collected on December 24, 2019 (including SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, ESCI). VOSviewer was used for analyzing and visualizing results.

Research Findings
To explore how Fintech research has been conducted so far, the following findings have been presented, covering main countries, publications, institutions, and topics.

Main institutions and publications
Providing more detailed information beyond countries, Table 1 lists the top 10 institutions, indicating not only the strong presence of U.S., Chinese, and U.K. institutions such as MIT, NYU, Peking University, Zhejiang University of Finance Economics, University of London, etc., but also the Australian one such as the University of New South Wales. Table 2 shows the top 10 publication outlets, indicating the nature of interdisciplinarity of Fintech research, covering the related main disciplines such as e-commerce, finance, sustainability studies, information management, economics, business, organization law, etc.

Analysis of author keywords
To explore how the latest research concerns and topics correlate to one another, Figure 5 shows the co-occurrence network based on top 32 author keywords except for the most frequently-occurring Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research,volume 126 keyword "fintech". The omission of the term "fintech" is warranted because such omission helps distinguish 5 clusters of research topics.
The first cluster of digitization-based innovations (in red color) appears to be about technical innovations about financial services such as banking [11], payments, etc., with discussions on business models [12] and ecosystems. The second cluster of internet finance and regulation (in green color), consists of topics such as P2P lending, big data, China, financial markets, etc. [9,13], with discussions on Fintech and internet platform regulation to maintain financial stability [1,14]. The third cluster of cryptocurrencies and blockchains (in blue color) focuses on blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies, including the innovations to leverage their values [12]. The fourth cluster of financial inclusion (in olive color) contains topic of financial inclusion, in relation to trust [5,15]. The fifth cluster of AI and regulation technologies (in color purple) appears to be at the intersections of financial regulation and regulatory technologies (RegTech), which concerns the digitization of reporting and compliance processes [16].

Conclusion
The literature review has shown the following development on Fintech research: (1)  Overall, although the notion of financial inclusion has emerged, the current research institutions and concerns are predominantly those of developed countries. Thus, research topics such as green finance or sustainable finance have been overlooked. Future research and policy work should fill such an important gap. In particular, as financial and technological instruments have become important components of our everyday life, it is imperative for both researchers and policy-makers to explore the ways in which these instruments can facilitate systematic social and technical changes. For instance, future work can explore how Fintech can contribute to the prior work on sustainable production, consumption, and livelihoods [17].
Indeed, as the demand for more inclusive and sustainable systems of profits, people and planet rises, any financial innovations should consider more than just digital transformation of e-commerce, financial markets, related regulations, etc., but also whether and how such transformation can be green and sustainable. More attention should be paid on the development of sustainable finance [1,15], exploring the meaningful and innovative intersections between "green finance" and "smart finance", so as to advance systemic change through effective system thinking of financial services [18].