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The emergence of cryptocurrencies has tremendously changed the way of financial transactions around the world which has led to form distinct discussions in the field regarding its reliability. This paper aims to evaluate the published literatures on cryptocurrency identifying its growth, citation, prolific authors, journals, countries, active funding agencies, collaboration pattern and emerging research hotspots in the area.

Scientometrics and Altmetrics parameters have been incorporated in the study. Literatures covered from the Scopus database searching within “Article Title, Abstract, Keywords” with keywords “cryptocurrency” OR “digital currency” OR “bitcoin” OR “Ethereum” by limiting the time range of 2013–2022, English language and journal articles only. Total 6,107 documents have been identified. The further analysis and visualisation is performed using MSExcel, VOSviewer, Biblioshiny and Tableau. Another tool, Dimension.ai is used to identify the Altmetric Attention Score.

The findings reveal that the growth of research and citation rate hiked from the year 2017 till now. Elie Bouri is the top contributor, IEEE Access is the most prolific journal, China being the prolific country. Topics like Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contracts, financial markets are emerging researched hotspots. The reliability of crypto market is still not clear because of its high volatility. The findings of the study will be more useful in the academia, subject specialists, research institutions, funding agencies, publishing agencies in decision-making.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no such study found considering both Scientometrics and Altmetrics approaches on cryptocurrency research with the selected time bound.

One major impact of demonetisation is rise of cashless or digital transactions. The extension of the transition from a cash-based to a cashless economy has expanded even more now, based on the lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter discusses the various electronic payment methods used by the people, the frequency of using these methods and also to examine the reasons of changing habits in using electronic modes of payments. This study is both theoretical and empirical in nature, based on both primary and secondary data. Digitalising rural and poor population is much in talks but earlier literature did not acknowledge the status of slums and its inhabitants. Slum dwellers are the ones to be in the margin, and therefore are subject to more societal sufferings. In the context of female population particularly, the mechanism of urbanisation and increment in urban slums are subject to unique causes and unique consequences, and still these challenges are greatly underexplored by earlier literature in this field. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to find out the schemes, achievements and challenges for the cashless transaction practised by the female slum dwellers. To be extremely explicit, the sample area consists of two biggest slums of Kolkata and 100 female respondents are inquired for this study, taking 50 from each slum. For analysing the collected data, descriptive statistics tools and percentage analysis have been used. This chapter will also analyse India's gradual transition towards a cashless economy. Through the examination of digitalisation of slum dwellers, this study also attempts to identify whether digital modes result in empowerment of these women, of any kind. By paying a visit in the discussion of women empowerment, this chapter wants to revisit the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by world leaders in 2015, that embodies a roadmap for progress which leaves no one behind. The questions impacting achievement of SDG through women empowerment may not seem of utmost concern during the current situation but is equally important and needs to be discussed on a platform of its own.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) favorable attitude toward the financial sector’s digital transformation and the development of FinTech due to the rise of financial technology. FinTech blends innovation and technology to provide financial inclusion to stakeholders through various new products and services such metaverse and artificial intelligence.

A quantitative research approach was used to empirically validate the suggested research model by using 260 Emirates-based banking authorities and administrators’ data.

The findings indicate that FinTech adoption had a substantial impact on the competitiveness and performance of the UAE banking industry during COVID-19 times. The research indicates that adequate FinTech implementation and alignment with technology management directly influence the performance of the UAE’s banking sector in difficult times.

This study is critical because the UAE banking sector serves diverse nationalities, and its success is contingent on FinTech and its competitive edge.

This study aims to identify the factors that could explain the intention to use Paytech services within an Islamic banking context. The authors use an extended version of the technology acceptance model to develop a causal–predictive analysis.

The research model and hypotheses were tested by applying partial least square-structured equation modeling to data collected from 214 users of Islamic banking in Saudi Arabia.

The results show that perceived trust has a highly significant direct effect on the intention to use Islamic Paytech services, whereas perceived risk has a significant indirect effect on IU.

Internet banking behavior may not be static. In technology acceptance, during the various phases from introduction to the maturity phase, the respondent’s perceptions tend to change

From the point of view of Fintech services providers, the knowledge of the factors fostering the adoption of Fintech services would allow an international expansion without the inconvenience of establishing offices or companies in countries whose legislation does not favor the operations carried out by Islamic banks.

These digital payment services would allow access to financial services to the entire Muslim population regardless of their location (Islamic and non-Islamic nations) and will also reach out to the next generation of young Muslims as a majority are “digital natives” ready for digital Islamic financial solutions.

This study is the first to explore the intention to use Paytech services by Islamic banking users in Saudi Arabia. From a theoretical perspective, this work contributes to the academic literature by analyzing the intention to use Paytech services in an Islamic banking context. On the practical front, the study identifies the crucial factors that industry players can use to design their Paytech applications and services to increase financial inclusion in Saudi Arabia and other countries with similar cultures as well as to design an international expansion without the inconvenience of establishing offices or companies in countries whose legislation does not favor the operations carried out by Islamic banks.

This paper aims to assess the legal and regulatory framework for mobile banking (M-banking) in Tanzania. The technological development in information and communication technologies has converted a mobile phone from a simple communication device to a very complex instrument that allows people to perform various digital transactions and extra operations such as web browsing and email reading. Such tremendous developments have brought in place the regime of M-banking. The birth of M-banking has brought legal and institutional challenges that were not anticipated before. It has complicated the traditional role of the telecommunication regulator and financial regulator in the business and caused legal gaps that need to be bridged.

To disclose the legal gaps and bridge them, the study used doctrinal legal method and comparative study to learn the experience of international legal instruments and policies and laws of other jurisdictions. This paper has evaluated the contribution of international legal instruments and legal frameworks of foreign jurisdictions such as Kenya and the Philippines.

It has been revealed that the prevailing laws regulating M-banking in Tanzania do not adequately address and bridge the existing legal gaps. There is a need to enact a specific law regulating M-banking and confer such powers to a specific institution to deal with regulatory issues.

This paper stresses the importance of enacting new laws that will offer room for financial inclusion in the digital economy and protect consumers against financial risk. It also intends to act as a catalyst and change agent in policy and legislative development in the M-banking industry. It would also bring special attention to addressing consumer rights, security and risky issues surrounding the M-banking industry. Although several other authors in Tanzania have written in this area, they have not clearly focused on disclosing the existing legal gaps resulting from the convergence of the financial and communication sectors. This paper is therefore trying to offer an extensive discussion on the legislative development in the M-banking industry in Tanzania.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the technology acceptance model (TAM) and structural equation modeling (SEM) might be used to assess customer acceptance of financial apps aiming at paving the road for enabling a cashless society in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Using a convenience sample of 600 users of the BenefitPay app in the Kingdom of Bahrain, this study used the quantitative research approach to obtain 427 usable responses. Following a descriptive study to establish a framework for the data and a subsequent inferential analysis using SEM with confirmatory factor analysis, the research hypotheses were tested.

The results of this study back up what is claimed in the TAM theory literature, which shows that banking customers in the Kingdom of Bahrain who use e-payment methods are more likely to use BenefitPay if it is both easy to use and useful. BenefitPay systems behavioral intention to use was also highly influenced by aspects like ease of use and usefulness, which enable the development of cashless societies.

This research work contribution is described through exploring how a cashless society is developed using electronic apps by studying the case of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The Kingdom of Bahrain is unique, and hence the knowledge obtained from studying it cannot be applied mechanically to any other nation. Instead, the paper seeks to explain the motivations behind Bahrain’s move toward a cashless society, to analyze the difficulties and potential benefits of this transition and to spark much-needed conversations on how having less cash or none would affect the economies. Bahrain’s BenefitPay systems can be seen as a current pushing force toward cashless society; thus, understanding how people in the Kingdom of Bahrain adopt e-payment techniques is vital.

The TAM conceptual model is experimentally validated in this study using cutting-edge methods like SEM with value creation for banking sector management, making it stand out from similar research. This research may prove useful in laying the groundwork for a cashless society in the Kingdom of Bahrain by analyzing the key elements that affect the BenefitPay app.

Even if digital financial services have a positive impact on financial inclusion, it creates a digital as well as gender divide within and across countries, creating regional disparity even within developing nations. Though pandemic has initiated digitalization of various services, there has been scanty research on whether digital transfer of income can improve digital financial inclusion in post-pandemic era, especially in developing countries. The purpose of the current study is to explain the regional disparity within developing countries from three regions East Asia Pacific, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, using latest World Findex data, 2021.

The author takes an instrumental variable approach to run bivariate probit model to find the factors that motivate the users to make digital payments.

The study observes that electronic transfer of wages, government transfers and remittances can motivate individuals to make use of digital mode of transactions and mobile. The practice of formal saving and borrowings are the prerequisites. However, this mechanism holds good for East Asia Pacific and not for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, which are poor in information and communication technology infrastructure. Women are lagging behind men, but digital transfer of wages motivate them to make digital transaction.

Digitalization of all government services and provision of affordable mobile network and internet services are necessary for regions like South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. In East Asia Pacific region, data protection, data governance and better regulatory framework are required. Higher female labor force participation with digital transfer of wages and empowerment with smartphones are key to reducing the Gender gap.

The current study corrects for the possible endogeneity issue, which the extant literature has not paid attention to, and provides region-specific and gender-specific policy recommendations for an improved digital inclusion.

The aim of the present study is to shed light on the role of legal practitioners, namely, lawyers and notaries, in the fight against money laundering: Are they considered as facilitators or obstacles against money laundering? How does the global and the EU legal framework deal with the legal professionals?

The research follows a deductive approach attempting to respond to questions such as: How do the lawyers’ and notaries’ societies react in front of the anti-money laundering measures that concern them and why? What are the discrepancies between the lawyers’ professional secrecy and the obligations that EU anti-money laundering legislation assigns them?

This study disclosures the response of the European union and international legal and regulatory framework as well as the reflexes of the international and European legal professionals’ associations to this danger. It also demonstrates the reaction of lawyers against European union anti-money laundering legislation, to the point that it limits not only the confidentiality principle but also the position of the European judicial systems to the contradiction between this principle and the lawyers’ obligation to report their suspicions to the authorities.

To fulfil the study goals, it was necessary to overcome some obstacles, like the limitation of existing sources. Indeed, transnational empirical research considering the professionals who facilitate money laundering is narrow. Besides, policymakers and academics only recently expressed more interest in money laundering and its facilitators.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the legal professionals’ role not only in money laundering practices but also in anti-money laundering policies.

The study aims to determine the level of e-reading habits and preferred electronic reading materials among nursing college students. The study examines students’ problems and difficulties using electronic resources and their knowledge of electronic literacy. Over the recent years, worldwide interest in reading electronic books has skyrocketed.

This study uses a survey research design and a structured closed-ended questionnaire as the data collection instrument. The sample population consists of college students. The study uses a quantitative method to investigate this population’s e-reading habits and preferred electronic reading materials.

The study findings indicate that while students prefer electronic resources, they need help accessing them due to various factors such as cost and availability. The survey results show that libraries must subscribe to a broader range of electronic resources, and academics and publishers must promote open-access articles to address these limitations.

The study addresses a current issue of students’ reading habits and preferred electronic reading materials and examines the limitations they face in accessing these resources. This research concludes that 21st-century students have transitioned from traditional to digital reading habits. They have a preference for electronic resources but their access to these resources is limited.

Consumers frequently use electronic payments (e-payment) as their first step into formal financial services. The advancement of information and communication technology, on the other hand, has resulted in several achievements for human civilization, altering people’s lives, behaviors and societal measures. This study’s main aim is to investigate issues and identify the factors that are likely to influence customers’ acceptance of implementing e-payment in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

A quantitative research approach was adopted to test the influence of e-payment data security, trust, ease of use, usefulness and accessibility on customers’ acceptance of the service. A questionnaire survey was electronically administered to a purposive sample, and 531 responses were returned, achieving the required sample size for the study. Descriptive statistics analysis was used to ascertain data validity and consistency, and regression analysis was used to test the model’s hypotheses.

The findings of this study demonstrated a high influence of the mentioned factors on the e-payment acceptance of the customers in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The main recommendations are to increase the adoption of e-payment; focus highly on the security factor in e-payment adoption; create a trustworthy e-payment service; strive to make the e-payment services more user-friendly; increase the longevity of the e-payment services by focusing on usefulness; and make e-payment services more accessible.

This study’s potential contribution is to identify the factors that influence e-payment acceptance by customers in Bahrain and draw attention to issues to be considered in adopting new e-payment services.