Emerging threats in digital payment and financial crime: A bibliometric review

This study investigates the academic research trends related to digital payment fraud, financial crime, and online payment fraud utilizing a comprehensive approach that includes co-occurrence network analysis, author collaboration networks, and theme mapping. The study employs bibliometric analysis utilizing the Scopus dataset as a source of data to identify key themes, developing patterns, influential academics, researchers, and organizations, highly referenced publications, unexplored cluster areas, and research deficiencies in the area of digital payment frauds. The R programming tool and VOS viewer software tools were used to analyse the results. The results encompassed growth rate, source of publications, and the relationship between authors in the domain of research that was retrieved. The keyword trends, frequency of occurrence, and citation analysis are presented to capture the current research trends in financial crime, digital payment fraud, and online payment fraud. The four major themes that emerged were fraud risk in e-commerce, innovative learning systems for fraud detection and fraud prevention, behavior intention and fraud risk management in the digital banking sector, and finally, information security and fraud prevention. The study observed that most research focused on digital signatures, credit card fraud, blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, and so on. The study has some limitations as it uses the Scopus database and articles in English, ignoring publications in Chinese, French, and Spanish. Also, it is not possible to look into each relevant author and article. The subjective nature of bibliometric analysis also poses limitations. The managerial level can use the knowledge gained from these studies to measure risk, invest in technologies that prevent fraud, and carry out awareness and training campaigns. Financial institutions can adopt techniques and technologies that comply with existing rules and laws to mitigate fraudulent digital payment practices. This enhances payment security, leading to customer satisfaction and retention.