Alternative finance as ecosystem innovation: trust, data and digital funding channels

Purpose This study investigates how alternative finance digital platforms act as innovation drivers in the bank–firm relationship. Specifically, it explores how crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, and invoice trading models act as alternative funding channels that redefine traditional credit intermediation processes by innovating risk assessment practices, trust-building mechanisms and incumbent banks’ competitive positioning within emerging digital ecosystems. Design/methodology/approach A bibliometric review of 973 articles indexed in Web of Science and Scopus from 1994 to 2024 is conducted. Science mapping techniques (i.e. co-citation, co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence) are combined with cartography analysis to identify intellectual structures and clusters. A content analysis of the most influential contributions is used to outline a conceptual framework grounded in financial intermediation theory and innovation management. Findings Results show a sharp post-2014 acceleration and subsequent maturation of alternative finance research after 2014. Four dominant themes emerge connected to our clusters: (1) data intensive credit risk assessment on digital platforms, (2) trust and social factors in online lending, (3) information asymmetry and communication in platform settings and (4) funding and banking competition in the presence of alternative finance. Taken together, these themes illustrate how platform technologies, algorithmic scoring, and social reputation systems reconfigure relationship lending and progressively shift banks from exclusive intermediaries to actors embedded in multi-sided ecosystems. Originality/value The paper offers the first integrated bibliometric and content-based review of alternative finance, bank–firm nexus, and innovation management practices. The study conceptualizes alternative finance as an ecosystem-level innovation rather than a marginal funding channel and highlights the organizational and strategic implications for incumbent banks. The framework and research agenda proposed an advance understanding of platformisation, algorithmic screening of firms, digitally mediated trust and hybrid intermediation models in the literature on innovation management.