INTEREST CATEGORY: INNOVATION AND TECH
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Other

Author: Aijaz A. Shaikh

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Call for book chapters

Blockchain, Metaverse, and Digital Payments

Dear researchers/scholars/practitioners/experts,

We invite you to contribute a chapter to the book Blockchain, Metaverse, and Digital Payments. The world’s leading academic publisher, Routledge, has consented to publish the book in late 2023. This book will be a part of Routledge’s ‘Studies in Innovation, Organizations and Technology’ series.

Important dates:

• December 20, 2022 – Deadline for submitting the abstract/chapter proposal (500-700 words, including the title, background/motivation, methodology and major results)
• January 15, 2023 – Notification of acceptance/rejection
• April 1, 2023 – Deadline for submitting the book chapter (5000-7000 words, all-inclusive)
• May 5, 2023 – Peer/editor reviews due
• June 15, 2023 – Final book chapter due
• September/October 2023 – Book published

Background

As the delivery of products, services and ideas moves to the digital and virtual realms, our understanding of technology, payments, money, possessions and ownership is changing dramatically (Belk et al., 2022). These developments have escalated emerging technologies such as blockchain into topics of major importance. Initially introduced with the concept of cryptocurrencies (Prakash et al., 2022), blockchain technology is considered a ledger with the characteristics of immutability, distribution and traceability, thus allowing mistrusting entities to transact with each other without relying on a central third party (Mahmoud, et al., 2022). According to Tan and Saraniemi (2022) a blockchain ecosystem consists of the collaborations of various corporations that are seeking to improve the efficiency and transparency of asset transfers.

Blockchain technology is considered disruptive (Frizzo-Barker et al., 2020) and one of the major foundations of the metaverse. While this technology has received much attention from academia and industry, its adaptation across various sub-sectors of the economy and industry has been slow, and its deployment remains largely experimental (Wang et al., 2019). Nonetheless, due to its secure nature and inclusive transactions, many industrial players, including banking and payment firms, are looking for ways to use blockchain technology as a means to bolster consumer confidence and trust in digital payments, potentially leading to its wider adaptability and use.

On the same lines, after the promulgation of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), the role played by nonbanking actors, including telecoms, financial technology (FinTech) firms and BigTech (PayPal and Amazon), in developing and deploying innovative financial, banking and payment services is undeniable (Shaikh et al., 2022). Research and Markets (2022) has predicted that the global digital payment market size, estimated at USD 58.31 billion in 2020, was expected to reach USD 69.91 billion in 2021, with new platform-based payment ecosystems emerging across the globe.

The term ‘metaverse’ first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snowstorm (Joshua, 2017). The novel depicts the metaverse as a virtual reality space that combines the utilities of internet technology and augmented reality via avatars and software agents (Dwivedi  et al., 2020).  The metaverse has been described by Lee et al. (2021) as the nexus between the physical and virtual worlds that combines the newest iterations of internet technology with VR headsets, blockchain technology and avatars. The metaverse has been heralded as the next frontier for fuelling strategic business opportunities (Golf-Papez et al., 2022), with Bloomberg (2022) reporting that the metaverse market may reach USD 783 billion by 2024, compared to USD 478.7 billion in 2020.

Topics of Interest:

We seek conceptual, theoretical, policy and empirical works exploring or examining management, industry, policy and consumer perspectives in adopting using, and/or resisting the broader adoption and usage of blockchain, metaverse, and digital (online/virtual/mobile) payments. The major topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• The future of payments in the metaverse
• How is the metaverse reshaping the fintech and payment industry?
• Understanding the interaction between blockchain, metaverse and digital payments
• Metaverse, crypto and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
• Fintech, digital payments and financial inclusion
• Fintech and digital currencies
• The metaverse and e-commerce
• Comprehensive or systematic reviews of blockchain technology and the metaverse and their application in the business, IT and marketing fields
• Mobile payments and money
• The retail shopping experience, mobile commerce and the metaverse
• Exploring the relationship between fintech and blockchain technology
• Conceptualizing and theorizing blockchain, metaverse and digital payments (or digital wallets)
• Digital payments and regulatory frameworks such as DGPR and PSD2

To submit your abstracts/chapters or for any questions, please get in touch with editor Dr. Aijaz A. Shaikh at aijaz.a.shaikh@jyu.fi.

References

Belk, R., Humayun, M., and Brouard, M. (2022). Money, possessions, and ownership in the Metaverse: NFTs, cryptocurrencies, Web3 and Wild Markets. Journal of Business Research, 153, 198-205.

Bloomberg (2022). Metaverse Market size. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2022-07-13/metaverse-market-size-worth-824-53-billion-globally-by-2030-at-39-1-cagr-verified-market-research

Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Baabdullah, A. M., Ribeiro-Navarrete, S., Giannakis, M., Al-Debei, M. M., … & Wamba, S. F. (2022). Metaverse beyond the hype: Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management, 66, 1-55.

Frizzo-Barker, J., Chow-White, P. A. , Adams, P. R.,  Mentanko, J., Ha, D., and Green, S. (2020). Blockchain as a disruptive technology for business: A systematic review. International Journal of Information Management, 51, 1-14.

Golf-Papez, M., Heller, J., Hilken, T., Chylinski, M., de Ruyter, K., Keeling, D. I., and Mahr, D. (2022). Embracing falsity through the metaverse: The case of synthetic customer experiences. Business Horizons (In press).

Joshua, J. (2017). Information Bodies: Computational Anxiety in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 19(1), 17-47.

Lee, L.-H., Braud, T., Zhou, P., Wang, L., Xu, D., Lin, Z., … Hui, P. (2021). All one needs to know about metaverse: A complete survey on technological singularity, virtual ecosystem, and research agenda. arXiv, 2110, 05352. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2110.05352

Mahmoud, N., Aly, A., and Abdelkader, H. (2022). Enhancing Blockchain-based Ride-Sharing Services using IPFS. Intelligent Systems with Applications, 16, 1-14.

Prakash, R., Anoop, V. S., and Asharaf, S. (2022). Blockchain technology for cybersecurity: A text mining literature analysis. International Journal of Information Management Data Insights, 2(2), 1-14.

Research and Markets (2022). Global Digital Payment Forecasts 2022-2025. Available at: https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports

Shaikh, A. A., Alamoudi, H., Alharthi, M., and Glavee-Geo, R. (2022). Advances in mobile financial services: a review of the literature and future research directions. International Journal of Bank Marketing (In press).

Tan, T. M., and Saraniemi, S. (2022). Trust in blockchain-enabled exchanges: Future directions in blockchain marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 1-26.

Wang, Y., Singgih, M., Wang, J., and Rit, M. (2019). Making sense of blockchain technology: How will it transform supply chains? International Journal of Production Economics, 211, 221-236.