The Adoption of Fintech: The Fintech Ecosystem in Qatar with a Comparison to other Emerging Markets

Today, digital channels are no longer just cost-effective ways to interact with customers. Instead, they are becoming a significant and continuously increasing share of retail business worldwide. The Fintech ecosystem in Qatar is growing exponentially from using payment apps to introducing financial systems that support businesses. The research objective is to emphasize the gap between an ideal Fintech ecosystem and the Fintech ecosystem in Qatar. It aims to improve the Qatari Fintech ecosystem and identify the factors that could be affecting efficiency. It aims to understand the variables that significantly impact the Fintech ecosystem performance, and the level of satisfaction of Fintech providers towards government regulations and policies. A report made by DinarStandard, & Elipses (2021) ranking global Islamic Fintech ecosystems has ranked Qatar 10th. This thesis aims to examine why Qatar does not have an efficient Fintech ecosystem. It also examines Fintech business models, how Fintech firms operate in a regulated sector, and how they work with financial institutions. Furthermore, it determines, which ecosystem components have the biggest impact on the Fintech industry using interviews, secondary data from the QFCA (Qatar Financial Center Authority) and other sources. Using descriptive statistics, graphs and tables to the results show that there are some components of the Fintech ecosystem that need to be improved. The results showed that the Qatar fintech Ecosystem was rated average and is lacking in some components where the biggest component was regulations. this thesis also provides recommendations to ensure an efficient Fintech ecosystem. Hence, main research questions are the following to be addressed in this thesis: What does the current Fintech ecosystem in Qatar look like? And What are the variables hindering the efficiency of the Fintech ecosystem model in Qatar?