Small businesses and FinTech: a systematic review and future directions

Small businesses are significant to any economy from the perspective of employment and contribution to the national gross domestic product. Despite their significance, small businesses continue to face various unresolved challenges. Recent technological innovations in finance, collectively called FinTech, seem to address some challenges. FinTech-led business models like crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, invoice trading, mobile wallets and payments, and platform-driven supply chain finance are altering the ecosystem for small businesses. Though there have been efforts, insights on how small businesses have responded to the opportunities of FinTech appear to be limited. To address this, we conducted a systematic and cross-discipline literature review of 103 journal articles published between 2008 to 2023 on small businesses and FinTech. Four conceptual themes emerge from the analysis: usage of FinTech services (payment and financial), and impact of FinTech services (payment and financial) on small businesses. The paper articulates areas for future research.