The Technological Innovation of the Metaverse in Financial Sector: Current State, Opportunities, and Open Challenges

ABSTRACT Metaverse is an emerging digital space that uses innovative technologies to allow users to facilitate building relationships virtually and to create new interaction opportunities. Even, the financial sector has been disrupted by the metaverse involving digital assets, cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, and decentralized finance. The objective of this paper is to focus on novel intelligent systems technologies with the potential for application in the financial area to have a better knowledge of the current research topics, challenges, and future directions. A systematic literature review was conducted analyzing papers on technological innovation of the metaverse in financial sector. Following the PRISMA methodology, we have selected 29 primary studies from five scientific databases to be included in the review. The results show that 11 types of innovative metaverse technologies are applied in the financial sector, developing financial innovations, among which the most discussed is cryptocurrency. Among the opportunities that the use of the metaverse brings to the financial sector, the reduction of transaction costs is the most discussed. Finally, five open challenges in the use of metaverse technologies in the financial sector have been identified, relating to the use of data, the application of technologies, social integration, financial innovation, and regulatory compliance. Based on this study, recommendations on future research directions are provided to the scientific community.