Analysis of factors influencing blockchain implementation in finance sector in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The global finance industry is highly impacted by fintech innovations and technology transformations due to rapidly evolving emerging technologies. Blockchain has become one of the key emerging technologies to bring promising results in the finance sector. These transformations and the use of decentralized ledger systems would contribute to significant changes in financial transaction processing and with the advent of distributed ledger technology and its ability to enforce better transparency, blockchain is becoming a disruptive force in the finance industry. This research investigated challenges in implementing blockchain solutions in the finance sector in Sri Lanka. The Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) based approach was used to investigate relationships between identified factors that influence blockchain solutions. According to the results of the study, the factors with higher driving power included lack of trust in new and immature technology, lack of regulations and governance, lack of standardization, cost of implementation, and interoperability issues with legacy systems. The results of the study emphasize the importance of regulatory bodies to develop new rules and regulations to support the technology transformation and blockchain vendors to provide better interoperability and standardization across platforms.