Blockchain Technology and Fintech In Finance Literature in Croatia: A Prisma-Compliant Literature Review

Current finance literature in Croatia mainly focuses on the banking and insurance sector. Considering its economic relevance and topicality, published research on blockchain technology and Fintech is surprisingly scarce. This study surveys, reviews, and analyses Croatia’s empirical and theoretical finance literature on blockchain technology and fintech. The purpose of the paper is to fill in the literature gap, investigate state of the art and organize the status of research already conducted on financial technology and blockchain in Croatia to provide easy access to future researchers. Systematic literature reviews have become crucial for informing the academic community about the scientific area’s state of the art. Therefore, a systematic literature review with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines has been applied, combining electronic and manual searches to identify relevant studies using keywords such as „BLOCKCHAIN“ and/or „FINTECH“ and “CROATIA”. The surveyed scientific databases are the online Scopus, Web of Science, and CROSBI (Croatian Scientific Bibliography), with no restrictions to language, date of publication, or study design. The findings of the surveyed papers are presented in a narrative synthesis. Lastly, specific literature gaps, several research questions, and practice implications are identified, and suggestions and guidelines for future work are provided.