Bitcoin spearheaded the rise of cryptocurrencies since it was first launched in 2009. The concept of bitcoin as digital currency was first published publicly in the 2008 well-known whitepaper by pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. The whitepaper outlined a self-serving peer-to-peer transaction network concept based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party such as financial institutions. Since then, thousands of cryptocurrencies have been launched mostly through token offerings as an alternative approach of raising funds for blockchain, technology projects, and start-ups. People are holding cryptocurrencies mostly as digital asset investments. Some individuals made huge profits from buying cryptocurrencies at their initial offerings and sold later when the prices increased. Some crypto millionaires were born from such trades. However, many people lost their investment as well due to many factors. Some were due to bad investment decisions, and some fall into scams and investment programs run by dishonest peoplewith promises of highly lucrative returns. As trading and owning cryptocurrencies are becoming common, governments and policymakers around the world are coming up with proper and comprehensive regulations for cryptocurrencies. In the context of Malaysia, in which zakat collections and distributions are of state matters, this paper discusses the implementation of zakat payment platform for cryptocurrencies at zakat institutions. This paper seeks to contribute to the academic development, blockchain technology, and zakat management.

Financial technology (FinTech) is leading a worldwide revolution to increase financial access. Bangladesh’s financial sector is entering a new era of innovation due to the country’s rapid embrace of financial technology. Mobile FinTech service (MFS) providers achieve unattainable economic peaks every year. The growth of conventional banks’ MFS is significant. However, Islamic banks have a good market share but cannot attract more customers to use the Islamic MFS. This study aimed to determine the factors influencing Islamic bank customers to accept the Islamic MFS. This study utilized a modified UTAUT2 model. Data were collected from 310 Islamic bank customers by using online Google Forms. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data by SMART PLS 3.2.9. The results revealed that social influence, facilitating conditions, price, and perceived credibility have a significant positive effect on Islamic MFS acceptance. However, performance expectancy and effort expectancy showed no impact on Islamic MFS acceptance. This research framework is helpful for academicians and researchers to investigate FinTech acceptance in developing countries. Moreover, the study results are beneficial for MFS providers and FinTech firms.

Employee performance is the secret to success for every company. Companies want their employees to understand the company’s vision and objectives and meet the individual goals set by the managers. The insurance industry in Bangladesh has stagnant growth compared to other industries. Moreover, insurance companies are lagging in managing human resources, especially permanent employees. Sustainable employee performance will help companies to achieve sustainable growth. This study aimed to identify the influencing factors that impact sustainable employee performance of insurance industry employees in Bangladesh. The study utilized the social exchange theory as the underpinning theory. The study modified the social exchange theory and proposed a research framework with five indicator variables: compensation, job satisfaction, work environment, leadership style, and motivation. The survey included 200 insurance company employees from various departments and companies. The collected data were analyzed using the partial least square–structural equation modeling (PLS–SEM) method using SMART PLS 3.2.7 software. The findings revealed that all the factors significantly positively impacted sustainable employee performance. The results of the study are helpful for academicians and researchers to analyze employee performance further. In addition, the results will help insurance companies and policymakers to make appropriate decisions to ensure sustainable employee performance in the organization.

In a world where smartphones dominate the market and provide opportunities to a vast population, this work introduces an innovative application that enables users to order irrigated vegetable crops from urban farmers. The application utilizes simple fertigation system technology, which can be easily implemented in small areas such as homes. Currently, consumers and sellers rely on traditional methods like paper or other means to place orders for vertical farming. However, research shows that these methods are unreliable and only offer temporary relevance. Additionally, the traditional agriculture supply chain diminishes the appeal of urban farming as its benefits do not outweigh the disadvantages. The primary objective of this application is to promote the concept of urban farming by creating an online marketplace that bypasses traditional methods. This allows consumers to directly order from the farmers themselves, serving as an alternative to the agricultural supply chain. Furthermore, a monitoring system has been integrated into the application as an additional tool, enabling farmers to remotely monitor and control their farms. This feature is particularly beneficial for urban farmers with farms in multiple locations who may lack the time to physically visit each one.

The aim of this research is to discuss the groundwork of building an Islamic Banking Document Screening Prototype based on a serverless architecture framework. This research first forms an algorithm for document matching based Vector Space Model (VCM) and adopts Levenshtein Distance for similarity setting. Product proposals will become a query, and policy documents by the central bank will be a corpus or database for document matching. Both the query and corpus went through preprocessing stage prior to similarity analysis. One set of queries with two sets of corpora is tested in this research to compare similarity values. Finally, a prototype of Shariah Document Screening is built based on a serverless architecture framework and ReactJS interface. This research is the first attempt to introduce a Shariah document screening prototype based on a serverless architecture technology that would be useful to the Islamic financial industry towards achieving a Shariah-compliant business. Given the development of Fintech, the output of this research study would be a complement to the existing Fintech applications, which focus on ensuring the Islamic nature of the businesses.