The Impact of International Economic Sanctions on the Use of
Financial Technologies
MOHAMMAD AHMAD ALNAIMAT
Department of Accounting, Faculty of Business, Alzaytoonah University of Jordan,
594 St., Airport Rd., Amman
JORDAN
NATALIIA RUDYK
Department of Finance named after Victor Fedosov, Faculty of Finance, State Higher Educational,
Institution Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman,
54/1 Peremogy Av., 03057, Kyiv,
UKRAINE
AHMAD A. AL-NAIMI
Department of Finance and Banking Sciences, Faculty of Business, Applied Science Private University,
21 Al-Arab St., Amman,
JORDAN
ANNA PANCHENKO
Department of Business Economics and Investment, Institute of Economics and Management, Lviv,
Polytechnic National University,
12 Bandera Str., 79013, Lviv
UKRAINE
IGOR TURSKI
Department of Tourism, Hotel and Restaurant Business, Lutsk National Technical University,
75 Lvivska Str., 43018, Lutsk,
UKRAINE
Abstract: - The aim of this study was to elaborate a conceptual approach to the development of financial
technologies under the impact of restrictions imposed by international economic sanctions. The development of
this sector was analyzed based on empirical studies of available information on the state of the FinTech sector
in 28 countries that are impacted by international economic sanctions, using the Global Sanctions Database
presented by OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control). The research involved comprehensive research
methods: situational analysis, system analysis, reproductive analysis, structural and functional analysis. The
results of the study confirmed the main hypothesis: international economic sanctions do not block the
development of financial technologies, as FinTech can ensure the development of the financial sphere of
sanctioned countries because of its flexibility and mobility. The calculations proved that depending on the way
of combining the internal perception of external restrictions imposed by the sanctions, which is unique for each
country, international economic sanctions are a stimulator for some countries (China, Ukraine, Iran), while
being a significant development blocker (r=0.896) for others (with a financial technology performance less than
1). This study will be useful not only to scholars who deal with the theoretical and methodological framework
of the development of the financial sector of countries subject to sanctions.
Key-Words: - Development, digital technologies, financial technologies, global environment, sanctions
restrictions, start-up.
Received: July 26, 2022. Revised: February 6, 2023. Accepted: February 27, 2023. Published: March 16, 2023.
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DOI: 10.37394/23207.2023.20.63
Mohammad Ahmad Alnaimat,
Nataliia Rudyk, Ahmad A. Al-Naimi,
Anna Panchenko, Igor Turski
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1 Introduction
The rapid development of digitalization has
triggered the emergence of completely new financial
technologies, such as artificial intelligence, smart
contracts, cryptocurrency, Big Data technology,
blockchain, cloud technologies, etc. These
technologies have widely captured all spheres of
social life and business environments.
Informatization, globalization and digitalization are
becoming the modern “three whales” of the
development of economic relations.
Such a powerful influence of the digital era on
people’s daily lives and activities has caused the
phenomenon of “digital breakthrough”, [1]. This
means that the digital era inevitably changes the
way the economy functions, causing disruption or
interruption of traditional business models, [2].
Statistics show that 9 out of 20 companies in the
world are digital, while 1 out of 20 companies was
digital ten years ago, [3].
The escalation of military conflicts in Europe
and Asia causes concern about the possible
disruption of the chain of globalization trends due to
the introduction of economic sanctions or other
restrictions, which will be expressed in the complete
or partial termination of relations in the context of
growing internalization of business relations.
According to the experts’ estimates, the adoption
and use of digital technologies could increase
China’s GDP by 23% by 2026 compared to 2020. In
the United States, GDP growth could reach US$2.3
trillion by 2026. A significant increase in the value
of digital technologies is also expected in the EU
countries, [4]. The rapid development may be
affected by external factors (such as, for example,
the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus
pandemic), certain restrictions, or any force
majeure. There is an assumption that payment cards
will completely disappear from circulation within
the next 10-15 years, and payments will be digital
only, [5]. The application of digital technologies for
financial services (FinTech) creates a new
communication interface between consumers and
providers of financial services. Therefore, the
question “Is it possible to stop significant
globalization progress in the 21st century if sanctions
are applied?” is very acute.
The aim of this study is to analyze the state and
prospects of the development of financial
technologies under the impact of international
financial sanctions in the period of global digital
transformations. The aim involved the following
research objectives:
- Determine the nature and economic nature
of international sanctions in the field of financial
technologies;
- Identify factors of positive and negative
impact of international economic sanctions on
financial technologies, which correlate with the
indicators of macroeconomic stability of the country
as a whole.
2 Literature Review
Sanctioning is one of the economic and political
tools for imposing demands on the infringing
country and realizing the interests of one country by
another, [6]. In [7] the authors state that countries
around the world and international organizations
tend to use economic sanctions as an alternative to
military aggression when exercising influence on
the infringing country through international
diplomacy.
Identified four groups of restrictions in
international practice that can have a significant
impact on all sectors of the economy, [8]:
1) diplomatic sanctions – termination of
negotiations, closure of diplomatic missions,
exclusion of the infringing country from
international organizations, etc.;
2) financial sanctions – financial aid
termination, prohibition or complication of
international loans (or demand for early recovery of
existing ones), asset freezing;
3) trade sanctions – export and import
restrictions, trade embargoes;
4) “smart” (individual) sanctions – asset
freezing (or confiscation) or ban on movement
(entry) against individual companies or individuals.
Although researchers from many countries, [9]-
[11] have been actively discussing the actual
effectiveness of their application for more than a
decade, the growing dynamics of the use of
sanctions in modern diplomacy speaks for itself. By
the beginning of 2022, the UN has introduced 14
sanctions regimes against individual countries,
while the USA has introduced 35. The EU should be
considered an undisputed supporter of the use of
tools of economic and political restrictions. Its
representative bodies have introduced as many as 45
sanctions regimes. The Russian Federation is the
world leader in terms of the number of international
sanctions imposed as of July 1, 2022 – 76 sectoral
and 4,655 personal restrictions, [12].
In general, an economic sanction is considered to
be a punishment or manipulation of economic
cooperation and relations in order to achieve
political goals. Scientists, [10], define economic
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sanctions as a subset of foreign policy instruments
that allow a country or some countries to pursue
their political intentions in a target country during
controversies. Economic sanctions can be applied
when a country violates international law, human
rights, or simply national interests of other nations,
[13]. The most common economic sanctions are
imposed in the trade, energy and financial sectors.
Sanctions often have serious implications. For
example, authors, [11], argue that countries under
US sanctions suffered a 13% reduction in their gross
domestic product. UN sanctions have an even more
significant impact on the economy – up to 25% of
GDP [14]. Besides, the impact of sanctions on
sectors of the economy is not reduced to individual
enterprises under sanctions, they have much more
severe effects, [15]. Economic sanctions often lead
to negative exogenous economic shocks, banking
crises [7], currency crises [5], and reduced economic
growth with simultaneous increase in inflation and
unemployment rates [16].
The probability that a state subject to
international sanctions that have become partially or
completely isolated from the international market
further increases investor uncertainty about its
economic prospects, [8]. Therefore, the introduction
of sanctions entails a reduction not only in trade
flows [9] but also in investment flows [5], makes
full operation of blockchain technology impossible
[2], causes restrictions on cryptocurrency
circulation, etc. [17]. In general, the survey of the
study conducted enabled distinguishing the
following types of international economic sanctions
that can be applied to limit the use of financial
technologies, [13], [14] (Figure 1).
Besides the introduction of economic sanctions
(mostly by a country that has a large influence on
the world economy, or by a coalition of countries)
indicates the probability of isolation of the
infringing country from the international market of
financial technologies, thereby increasing the
investors’ uncertainty regarding the development
prospects of the sanctioned state, [8]. Scientists, [3],
[18], found strong empirical evidence of bilateral
effects of sanctions on countries through the
globalizing interrelation of financial technologies.
High economic uncertainty and the probability of a
global banking crisis caused by economic sanctions,
[7], lead to the instability of the financial sector not
only of the sanctioned country but also of all related
transactional payment networks.
Over the past 20 years, the shift from
comprehensive sanctions against countries to
targeted or so-called smart sanctions has been aimed
at harming only those they want to punish through
such restrictions. Banking institutions and financial
companies may suffer greater losses from imposed
sanctions if they operate in uncertain economic
conditions, [9]. Things are somewhat different for
fintech companies, especially payment companies,
which are supported by traditional banks and
usually subject to the same types of supervision by
their correspondent banks, [3]. In this case, the lack
of well-defined regulatory regimes in some
jurisdictions that directly control financial
technologies may enable taking advantage of
“loopholes” in sanctions restrictions to facilitate
some transactions that violate the sanctions,
intentionally or not.
So, FinTech can facilitate or hinder sanctions
regimes by being applied in different ways using
different tools. Besides, sanctions can
fundamentally reshape FinTech ecosystems, [19].
FinTech is often called, [17], [20], [21] a
powerful tool for evading sanctions (for example,
cryptocurrency mining as a way of investment). On
the other hand, FinTech occupies an important place
among regulators’ efforts to monitor cross-border
transactions for business by sanctioned entities,
[22]. Financial supervision regulators “use
technology to improve their monitoring systems, as
well as their financial systems. In [23] the author
cites an example of real-time monitoring of bank
capital requirements, setting prudential supervision
requirements, and real-time monitoring of capital
market transactions to detect market abuse and
insider trading”. Business entities that deal with
cryptocurrency assets are subject to many laws and
regulations as any financial services business. These
are some of the strictest rules governing the
provision of financial services in the world, and
crypto businesses invest huge resources in
complying with obligations such as anti-money
laundering and sanctions.
FinTech has become considerably popular
because of its accessibility and ease of use. Besides,
a significant number of financial technologies are
conducted in such a way that is not subject to
regulatory supervision. Consequently, there is a
false statement that FinTech is not subject to
sanctions,[24]. Although entities dealing with
financial technology are not banking institutions,
they provide a platform for finding and placing
investments, move capital through a financial and
payment platform, [25], and blockchain technology
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Mohammad Ahmad Alnaimat,
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makes the investment process more transparent. In
our opinion, we should not be emphatic about the
overall positive or negative impact of international
economic sanctions on financial technologies.
Sanctions show a wide range of development for
digital financial initiatives, which sometimes even
help to legally circumvent the imposed restrictions.
Fig. 1: Typology of sanctioning instruments of influence on financial technologies
Source: generalized by the author
3 Methodology
The development of the FinTech sector was
analyzed on the basis of empirical studies of
available information on the state of this sector in
countries impacted by international economic
sanctions. The study involved complex research
methods: situational analysis, system analysis,
reproductive analysis, and structural-functional
analysis.
The impact of international sanctions on the use
of financial technologies was studied by using a
dataset of 28 countries under international economic
sanctions for 2019-2021, as well as the Global
Sanctions Database provided by OFAC (Office of
Foreign Assets Control), which administers several
different sanctions programs. Both comprehensive
and selective sanctions were studied, such as the use
of asset freezes and trade restrictions to achieve
foreign policy and national security goals. The
following countries were classified as sanctioned:
Iran, Iraq, Cuba, the Russian Federation, Belarus,
part of the territory of Ukraine occupied since 2014,
Syria, North Korea, Eritrea, Burma, Congo,
Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, Venezuela,
Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Hong
Kong, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Ivory Coast
(Côte d'Ivoire), Haiti, Guinea, China, Serbia.
The principles of scientists, [10], [14], were used
to examine the total number of banking and
financial relations in a country’s fintech sector
through the automated banking system Dealogic
Loan Analysis and AnyLogic software application.
All variables were added by pre-estimation, taking
into account multicollinearity aspects.
The following model was used to study the
relationship between economic sanctions and the
expected efficiency of financial technologies
(Formula 1):
EFinTechit=β0+β1FDIi,t+β2CONTROLi,t+θt+ϑi+ϵit,(1)
where і and t are year and country under
research, respectively;
θt and ϑi are included for time control and
country-fixed effects of imposed international
economic sanctions
ϵit denotes error conditions.
A dependent variable, FDIi,t — Financial
Development Index — is an integral indicator
published annually by the World Economic Forum
for the comparative analysis of various aspects of
financial systems and the analysis of factors
contributing to the development of the financial
system.
The CONTROLi,t variable consists of a set of
determinants defined as economic factors that
determine the development of financial technologies
under the influence of international sanctions in the
studied countries: from the level of digitalization of
social life to the growth of the country’s GDP, [13].
The main hypothesis was advanced on the basis
of all the indicators mentioned in the study:
international economic sanctions do not block the
development of financial technologies, as Fintech
can ensure the development of the financial sphere
of sanctioned countries because of its flexibility and
mobility.
4 Results
FinTech represents the next stage of the
development of financial services, characterized by
the emergence of new technological and innovative
Sanctions instruments of influence on financial technologies
Blocking of financial assets
and international operations
Suspension of financial and
technical support for
banking operations
Creation of a
“black” list of
institutions
Supervisory
control
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start-ups at the intersection of the traditional
financial services and digital tools. The very nature
of financial intermediation services has been
changing as a result of the use of new modern
technologies. The world average indicator of the use
of financial technologies in the economy is 64%.
The implementation of FinTech in the financial
sector of the economy looks as follows in terms of
the geography (Figure 2). Mobile financial
applications are the most popular among all
FinTechs in the studied countries, both as a means
of payment and as a way to control one’s
finances (Figure 3).
Cryptocurrency as a means of payment and
investment ranks second in terms of popularity.
Such popularity is explained by the example of Iran,
which began to use cryptocurrency as the main
means of payment in international trade after the US
imposed sanctions on the use of dollars. This
method of circumventing unilateral restrictions not
only exposed the conceptual drawbacks of
unilaterally managed sanctions regimes, but also
confirmed that sanctions are not a critical
prohibition, but only a process of interaction
between business entities. Therefore, Iran increased
the share of cryptocurrency payments from 0.2% to
5.3% for the period 2019-2021 to ensure the flow of
money for the necessary purposes.
Fig. 2: The spread of FinTech in the financial sector of the countries in 2021
87%
87%
74%
68%
46%
45%
43%
42%
41%
41% 47%
37%
37%
37%
36%
34%
34%
34%
34%
38%
36%41%
40% 46%
42%
35%
34%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
China
Ukraine
Iran
Russian Federation
Central African Republic
Libya
Lebanon
Liberia
Iraq
Cuba
Belarus
Hong Kong
Syria
Haiti
Guinea
Serbia
Afghanistan
Somalia
Ivory Coast
Venezuela
Sudan
Yemen
Ethiopia
Congo
Burma
North Korea
Eritrea
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Source: author’s research
Fig. 3: The use of FinTech in the studied countries in 2021
Source: author’s research
US regulators are increasingly imposing
significant financial penalties on crypto-businesses
contrary to popular belief that the crypto-asset
industry is unregulated. The majority of these
penalties relate to illegal issuance of
securities ($1.38 billion), fraud ($928 million), and
sanctions violations ($639.8 million) (Figure 4).
Just as traditional banking and financial
institutions are penalized by regulators for violating
sanctions regulations, crypto-businesses are no
exception. An analysis of US regulatory actions
since 2014 shows that $2.948 billion in fines have
been imposed against cryptocurrency companies and
individuals (Figure 5).
The dynamics of financial penalties in the field
of financial technologies indicated in Figure 5
include fines imposed by the United States
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) —
$ 604.3 million, by the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission (CFTC) — $ 505.2 million, the
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)
— $ 1090.2 million, and the Office of Foreign
Assets Control — OFAC) — $ 748.2 million.
Fig. 4: The structure of fines for violations of cryptocurrency circulation
Source: author’s research
24,20%
6,30%
4,20%
22,50%
17%
34,30%
72,20%
35,70%
0,00% 20,00% 40,00% 60,00% 80,00%
Other
Big Data
Challenger Banks
Investment, financing
Blockchain
B2B
Mobile payments, transfers, private finances
Cryptocurrency
1380
928
639,8 Illegal issue of securities
Fraud
Violation of sanctions requirements
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Fig. 5: Dynamics of fines for violation of sanctions rules in the field of FinTech
Source: author’s research
The said punitive action was applied to
infringing countries that have already been subject
to financial monitoring sanctions. But this does not
include objects of international cooperation
(countries, corporations, cooperatives, etc.) subject
to increased monitoring that actively cooperate with
OFAC to eliminate strategic deficiencies of their
financial technologies regarding the counteraction to
money laundering, terrorist financing, or the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Coming under increased monitoring (to the so-
called “grey list”), the country finds itself one step
away from sanctions. The 2022 “grey list” includes
22 countries: Albania, Barbados, Burkina Faso,
Cambodia, the Cayman Islands, Haiti, Jamaica,
Jordan, Mali, Malta, Morocco, Myanmar,
Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Senegal,
South Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab
Emirates, Yemen. A country’s being on this list
does not automatically impose international
economic restrictions or bans, but most countries try
to quickly eliminate identified strategic
shortcomings in order not to lose international
positions.
Despite the complex actions of the US
government aimed at largely excluding the
sanctioned country from the global financial system,
the development of certain financial technologies
can be studied through the case of Iran. The latter in
many ways imitates what exists elsewhere, but on a
smaller scale and, as the practice has shown, with
much lower efficiency. After all, the globalization of
the digital world produces its effects making it
impossible for the financial sector to function
effectively while being isolated.
Iranian has learned to use technological
loopholes in the FinTech ecosystem to interact with
external business channels, while developing its
own set of financial tools. The impact of the “grey
list” on the global functioning of financial
technologies should be noted. Middle East Payment
Service (MEPS) is a regional Payment Service
Provider (PSP) in the Persian Gulf (registered in
Jordan) serving financialinstitutions as well as
retailers and corporations. Services and products
include card issuing, processing and acquiring,
merchant acquiring, ATM management, dynamic
currency conversion, e-voucher, PoS bill payment,
etc.
11,1 0 0 43,5 075,6 129,5 344,6
00 0 122,2 00
411,1
556,9
00 0
0500,7
0
0
4,5
00 0
0
0
227,6
520,5
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
SEC FinCEN CFTC OFAC
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Fig. 6: Iranian FinTech start-ups during international economic sanctions
Source: Tehran Times, [26]
Having found themselves in international
isolation, Iranian companies began to copy most of
the well-known digital financial offers. Iran
developed its own SWIFT payment scheme for
interbank transactions, Shetab banking system for
online payments, Way2Pay.ir digital financial
platform for convenient use of the symbiosis of
FinTech, RegTech, InsurTech, etc. MEPS played a
significant indirect role in the process of bypassing
sanctions by Iranian FinTech due to the global
nature of the financial system. Such digital financial
autonomy has enabled Iranians to enjoy many of the
same high-tech features as in any other country,
although these systems have low efficiency and very
high costs (Figure 6).
FinTech start-ups launched during 2019-2022
laid the foundation for reforming the country’s
financial system, despite the international economic
sanctions imposed on a country. There were 32
fintech companies that provide access to digital
financial services operating in Iran as of the
beginning of 2022.
Many sanctioned countries should surely learn
lessons from Iran’s resilience, but there are several
factors that change the picture. The Russian
Federation became the leader in terms of
international economic sanctions imposed on it in
2022, after a full-scale military invasion of the
territory of Ukraine. Russia’s economy is larger than
Iran’s one — and much more integrated into the
global financial system, with greater FinTech
penetration than Iran had when sanctions have been
imposed on the latter. The Russian ruble lost more
than 30% of its value in March 2022 after Russia’s
central bank, one of the key Russian financial
institutions was cut off from SWIFT, and the
country’s central bank subsequently ordered to raise
interest rates to 20%. Russia spent years building up
foreign exchange reserves, but the coordinated
multilateral freezing of the Russian central bank’s
assets caused the collapse of financial technology at
a much faster rate than Russian expectations for the
potential collapse of the country's financial system.
Iran's financial ecosystem has taken years to gain
some independence and stability. The pushback will
be severe in the case of Russia, as it has been cut off
from Western financial tools, such as the ability to
use foreign payment apps (for example, Apple Pay)
in everyday life. However, if the burdensome
sanctions regimes continue and expand,
cryptocurrencies and VPNs will play an important
role in Russia’s financial operations in the future,
similar to Iran. The reason is that the agility and
innovation of fintech companies will help them to
better maneuver throughout the sanctions period
than traditional banks.
However, Russia suffers a negative internal
influence on the FinTech development, in contrast
to Iran, where the government created additional
opportunities and prioritized innovative tools to
improve the country’s economic situation. The
Russian government’s ban on selling securities of
Russian companies to non-residents resulted in a
value drop of 22% in the first half of 2022, which
affects the clients of Russian fintech companies.
From the Russian government’s perspective, the
rejection of SWIFT was supposed to accumulate
efforts to develop cryptocurrency (the digital
currency of the Central Bank of Russia). It turned
out instead that this contributed to the establishment
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of deeper ties with China and the development of its
banking sector. However, if the harsh sanctions
continue and expand, regulatory gaps that remain in
certain FinTech sectors — including payment
systems that were designed to avoid SWIFT and its
relatively high transaction costs — will be taken
advantage of, as cryptocurrencies become
increasingly important to Russian FinTech
companies and ordinary people.
The calculations clearly confirm the hypothesis
proposed in the study: international economic
sanctions do not block the development of financial
technologies, as Fintech can ensure the development
of the financial sphere of sanctioned countries
because of its flexibility and mobility. Therefore,
international economic sanctions are a stimulator for
some countries (China, Ukraine, Iran), while being a
significant development blocker (r=0.896) for others
(with a financial technology performance of less than
1) (see Table 1).
5 Discussion
First, this paper describes the impact of international
economic sanctions on the use and development of
financial technologies. Therefore, it outlines global
digital implications. It is critically important for the
subject of sanctions to estimate own losses from
such a decision, which depends on many
determinants of the country’s financial
development, as sanctions are an external shock [8],
that can cause an economic crisis in the target
economy [7], which is the financial sector in this
case. Second, this paper provides a deeper
understanding of the moderating role of uncertainty
and institutional constraints, [16], following the
imposition of sanctions.
Agreeing with authors [9], we note that “In the
new world to come, where a major global power
may be shuttered from financial systems, we will
see increasingly sophisticated regtech fighting
increasingly sophisticated fintech in the struggle to
trace the supposedly untraceable”. Therefore, we
accept the opinion of authors in [3] that digital
financial technologies will play a vital role at all
levels of the economy: from population control of
their own finances to transactional payments of
multinational corporations.
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Table 1. Results of the model of the influence of variable variables on the resultant feature of the studied issue
Country
EFinTech
dy/dx
Std. Err.
China
1.07358
0.00121
0.003608
Ukraine
1.07358
0.00286
0.008528
Iran
0.91316
0.0033
0.00984
Russian Federation
0.83912
0.00847
0.025256
Central African Republic
0.56764
0.00143
0.004264
Libya
0.5553
0.00484
0.014432
Lebanon
0.53062
0.00341
0.010168
Liberia
0.51828
0.00693
0.020664
Iraq
0.50594
0.00209
0.006232
Cuba
0.50594
0.00286
0.002442
Belarus
0.57998
0.00676
0.005772
Hong Kong
0.45658
0.0078
0.00666
Syria
0.45658
0.02002
0.017094
Haiti
0.45658
0.00338
0.002886
Guinea
0.44424
0.01144
0.009768
Serbia
0.41956
0.00806
0.006882
Afghanistan
0.41956
0.01638
0.013986
Somalia
0.41956
0.00494
0.004218
Ivory Coast
0.41956
0.00275
0.004037
Venezuela
0.46892
0.0065
0.009542
Sudan
0.44424
0.0075
0.01101
Yemen
0.50594
0.01925
0.028259
Ethiopia
0.4936
0.00325
0.004771
Congo
0.56764
0.011
0.016148
Burma
0.51828
0.00775
0.011377
North Korea
0.4319
0.01575
0.023121
Eritrea
0.41956
0.00475
0.006973
This research confirmed the example of Iran that
such technologies as blockchain and
cryptocurrencies are powerful engines for the
development of the sanctioned economy. But no
matter how powerful cryptocurrencies as a tool are
in the system of making payments and investing in
business processes during the sanctions, it would be
unreasonable to think that the effectiveness of
financial technologies does not decrease under the
influence of sanctions regimes.
Confirming Peksen’s, [25], opinion, we conclude
that sanctions will certainly not stop digital financial
ecosystems, but they will play a crucial role in
forcing the financial ecosystem to undergo
transformation in various ways to become more
self-sufficient.
6 Conclusions
Financial technologies are becoming an innovative
trend that is developing rapidly in the current global
digital environment. Its mobility and flexibility
made FinTech not only a method of online
payments for a wide range of ordinary consumers
but also a powerful financial tool for making
transactional payments between countries subject to
international economic sanctions. Although this
study in no way promotes the search for methods of
avoiding sanctions, the obtained results not only
expose the conceptual shortcomings of unilaterally
managed sanctions regimes but also confirm that
sanctions are not a critical prohibition, being rather
only a process of interaction between business
entities.
That is why the transformational processes
taking place in the country’s economy after the
imposition of international economic sanctions on it
entail the development of financial technologies to
prevent banking and financial crises. The result is
FinTech start-ups that create innovative products,
technologies or interaction processes. This was the
main confirmation of the research hypothesis:
international economic sanctions do not block the
development of financial technologies, as FinTech
can ensure the development of the financial sphere
of sanctioned countries because of its flexibility and
mobility.
WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on BUSINESS and ECONOMICS
DOI: 10.37394/23207.2023.20.63
Mohammad Ahmad Alnaimat,
Nataliia Rudyk, Ahmad A. Al-Naimi,
Anna Panchenko, Igor Turski
E-ISSN: 2224-2899
691
Volume 20, 2023
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Anna Panchenko, Igor Turski
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DOI: 10.37394/23207.2023.20.63
Mohammad Ahmad Alnaimat,
Nataliia Rudyk, Ahmad A. Al-Naimi,
Anna Panchenko, Igor Turski
E-ISSN: 2224-2899
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Contribution of Individual Authors to the
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The authors equally contributed in the present
research, at all stages from the formulation of the
problem to the final findings and solution.
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Scientific Article or Scientific Article Itself
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Conflict of Interest
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that are relevant to the content of this article.
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