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Introduction
Innovations in financial services (hereafter referred to as financial innovations) have revolutionized the way that firms conduct business, our day-to-day financial transactions, and the well-being of society. New financial services have led to a significant increase in the volume of domestic and international business, and the emergence of new business models (Estelami, 2012; Sandor, 2012). For example, online retailing and electronic commerce would not have been possible without the existence of the innovative financial infrastructures that handle the global financial transactions. The history of developing innovative ways to handle the financial aspects of "exchange" goes back to several millennia. Examples of such innovations in recent decades are credit cards, automated teller machines (ATMs), internet and mobile banking, innovative ways to transfer funds, complex and synthetic securities, and credit default swaps. Financial innovations are intertwined with other industries and consumers' lives, which makes them crucial to different societies and businesses (World Economic Forum, 2012).
It is important to organize the academic research on financial innovations in a structured way in order to identify the areas that have been examined and the areas that have received less attention. Few recent studies have reviewed the literature on internet and mobile banking or payments (Dahlberg et al. , 2008; Moser, 2015; Ngai and Gunasekaran, 2007; Yousafzai, 2012). However, these areas cover only a subset of the vast domain of financial innovations and the relevant academic literature. Moreover, the review studies focus on qualitative reviews of the papers, the theories, or the discourse used in the literature. As a result, there is no clear overview of the present state of the research on financial innovations.
This study seeks to fill this gap by exploring two research questions:RQ1.
What is the current state of research on innovations in financial services?
RQ2.
What are the areas that have received less attention, and hence offer opportunities for future research?
The study offers a novel picture of the existing research on financial innovations by examining the relevant research papers that are published in premier relevant journals. The unique aspect of this study is examining the published papers using a quantitative and structured approach, which offers a holistic overview of the previous research on financial innovations published in the selective journals to researchers...