{"id":142321,"date":"2026-05-13T12:09:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T12:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/?page_id=142321"},"modified":"2026-05-17T09:13:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T09:13:39","slug":"project_4","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/project_4\/","title":{"rendered":"FinTech Adoption Research Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

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FinTech Adoption Research Program: Mapping the Digital Financial Transformation of Arab Economies<\/h3>\n

Arab economies are undergoing a digital financial transformation faster than the academic literature has been able to map. Central banks across the region are piloting digital currencies, mobile wallets are reshaping consumer payment behavior, and Islamic finance institutions are integrating artificial intelligence into compliance and product design. Yet the empirical evidence base for these transitions remains thin, and the behavioral models used to explain technology adoption in Arab contexts are still largely imported from settings that do not share Arab regulatory, cultural, and religious dynamics. The FinTech Adoption Research Program at the Faculty of Administrative and Financial Sciences, Palestine Ahliya University, was established to close this gap.<\/p>\n

Led by Dr. Mohammed Ajouz with a research network spanning Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom, the program asks a single question with several branches: what are the behavioral and institutional determinants of digital financial service adoption in Arab economies, and how do these differ between Islamic and conventional frameworks? Its theoretical contribution is a modified UTAUT model calibrated for Arab markets, integrating cultural specificity, religious-juridical considerations, and post-pandemic digital acceleration.<\/p>\n

In 2025 alone, the program produced 29 Scopus-indexed publications, with a flagship paper, Investigating User Acceptance of AI-Driven FinTech Services Through the Lens of the UTAUT Model, registering a Field-Weighted Citation Impact of 50.24, the highest of any publication from Palestine Ahliya University in 2025 and among the highest from any Palestinian university in the social sciences this year. Six further papers appeared in journals with SNIP percentiles above 90, including the International Journal of Financial Studies and Emerald and Springer flagship outlets.<\/p>\n

The substantive coverage of the program is broad and policy-relevant. Studies examine consumer trust dynamics in eWallet adoption across multiple Arab markets; user acceptance of AI-driven recruitment and credit-scoring tools; the moderating role of FinTech in banking customer retention; investor adoption of robo-advisors; determinants of profitability for Palestine’s Takaful insurance sector; and the jurisprudential treatment of digital contracts under Islamic law. The program also addresses sustainable and social finance, linking FinTech innovation to the Sustainable Development Goals on inclusive economic growth.<\/p>\n

The program’s findings have moved beyond academic circles into Arab financial practice. The modified UTAUT framework has been adopted as a reference by graduate finance programs at partner institutions in Jordan, the UAE, and Malaysia, and several Islamic banks operating in Palestine and Jordan have drawn on the program’s consumer-acceptance work in their own digital channel design. Members of the team contribute regularly to professional fora on Islamic FinTech and have presented at events convened by the Union of Arab Banks and regional Islamic finance networks. The flagship UTAUT paper is being cited internationally as a reference for Arab-market FinTech adoption research.<\/p>\n

What this program demonstrates, beyond its measurable academic output, is that a Palestinian university operating under occupation can build a research program whose theoretical contribution is now used to interpret financial behavior across six countries. The data is Arab. The framework is Arab. The intellectual leadership is Palestinian.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=””] FinTech Adoption Research Program: Mapping the Digital Financial Transformation of Arab Economies Arab economies are undergoing a digital financial transformation faster than the academic literature has been able to map. Central banks across the region are piloting digital currencies, mobile wallets are reshaping consumer payment behavior, and Islamic finance institutions are integrating artificial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-142321","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/142321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142321"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/142321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142378,"href":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/142321\/revisions\/142378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paluniv.edu.ps\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}