ICT Evolution and Its Role in Business Development

Abstract

Information and Communication technology (ICT) development is a topic that has gained popularity primarily due to the rapid technological growth. This development has resulted to the invention of concepts that have greatly benefited the financial sector. This article outlines a number of the ICT innovations that have emerged in the recent years and have successfully been efficient in their respective fields. While they may face challenges ranging from blockages from financial institutions, problems with ICT illiteracies, constraining federal licenses, entry barriers, and lack of adequate resources, these innovations have triumphed in ensuring that the needs of users are met. 

Keywords: ICT, innovation, Crowdfunding, Blockchain, Fintech, Smart Cities, SMEs, Internet of Things

ICT Evolution and Its Role in Business Development

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has fundamentally evolved over the last decade changing people’s lifestyles and companies’ activities, thus resulting to a situation where economic, social and financial incorporation is extremely altered by perceptions regarding technological change. The financial industry has particularly been at the forefront when it comes to adopting new technology, and this has been making a dramatic transformation due to a number of factors.

When it comes to demand, demographic prospects play a critical role; precisely, the increase in demand for financial facilities that are high-tech, wealth management and retail payments, is optimistically connected with a new generation growth, mostly referred to as ‘digital natives’ (Technologies 4.0, 2018). In supply, the ascent of high-speed computing equipment and cloud information processing permitted the management and handling of big data and data distribution.

Furthermore, the progress of ICT has from a distinctive perspective aided in alleviating issues arising from asymmetry information between borrowers and lenders by embracing the role of designing information. In turn, this role has greatly contributed to the advancement of P2P lending, an aspect that less remunerative enterprises view as an exceptional alternatives to financial companies’ loans. The P2P platforms naturally are dissimilar from banks when it comes to how they evaluate credit risk.

FinTech systems utilization has enabled P2P lenders to comfortably assess humongous volumes of data in order to alter their credit scoring procedures on a day to day basis, while major financial institutions do the same on a quarterly or monthly basis. Thus, P2P has the capability of swiftly responding to fluctuating market conditions. Digital revolution has inevitable raised a few concerns on the direction for the conventional financing system. It is still uncertain how FinTech will influence the fate of financial institutions, which in turn will affect their supply of services, market powers, and profitability. 

However, there may be two probable future scenarios. These platforms may influence the availability of technology to intermediaries, giving rise to new kinds of financial intervention that appease customers as well as new forms of association among lenders. Contrastingly, FinTech development may create room for newcomers such as high-tech forums that may end up competing with conventional agents. The worst-case scenario would be the emergence of large corporations functioning in the IT field by threatening the survival of traditional brokers. An exceptional instance of this probable circumstance is Amazon lending, a platform that aims at providing credits to SMEs.  

This article seeks to contribute further to the literature on information and communication technology development by discussing the innovative concepts such as Crowdfunding for enterprises development where internet platforms are used to link finance-seeking firms with potential lenders; Blockchain technologies and their usability as well as limitations; the emergence of Fintech or Financial technology firms which basically use contemporary technologies in the banking sector while outlining their advantages and disadvantages.

In addition, the researcher will discuss smart cities and the attributes that make them smart as well as their components whilst highlighting the role played by ICT; information and communication technology development, and some of the challenges faced despite the positive aspects connected to ICT development. Finally, the Internet of Things, which is basically a network of things that are interconnected. The conclusion will be a summary of the article while outlining its significance to academic theory and business practice.

Crowdfunding for Business Development

Crowdfunding primarily comprises kinds of capital supply, where companies seeking capital present themselves publicly through the internet to a large group of potential financiers based on their inventive business ideas, and offers them an opportunity to partake themselves with allotment of funding either in donation form or in exchange for rewarding or voting rights or both (Bouncken, Komorek, & Kraus, 2015). Researchers regard Crowdfunding as a conventional two-sided market in that it bonds two different groups of users together in a system.

Players Involved in Crowdfunding

There three main players involved. First and foremost are the intermediaries who connect and match the investors and fundraisers. These are primarily the internet-based platforms, as they ensure that Crowdfunding procedures are standardized for the financiers and serve as a forum for information, communication, and execution (Bouncken et al., 2015). Second are fundraisers who include individuals that seek financial aid. They are provided access to a market as they raise money. Finally, the investors are the crowd, who take the decision to financially help those projects, enduring a risk and anticipating a certain reward (Chu, Cheng, Tsai, Tsai, & Lu, 2019).

Crowdfunding and Innovation

Crowdfunding has surfaced as an inventive mode of funding businesses that are either small or medium-sized, where a great number of investors is rallied through the internet to donate little amounts to a venture during a given time period (Oba, Atakan, & Kirezli, 2018). This system of Crowdfunding developed as one of the aftermath of the financial crisis that occurred in 2008, due to the aggravations early-stage business owners encountered in raising finances since banks were reluctant to lend.

Crowdfunding takes a number of forms such as lending-based, reward-based, equity based, and donation-based (Stanko & Henard, 2017). Whilst lending-based crowd-funding produces considerable funding backing globally, reward and equity-based Crowdfunding have amassed the most interest with regard to their significations for innovation. In equity-based, financiers receive an ownership share, and their websites (such as Crowdcube) have significantly expanded but still remain somewhat lesser that reward-based sites (e.g., Indiegogo).

In addition, reward-based crowdfunding offers a moderately risk free means for startups and entrepreneurs to create new product recognition and assess the response of potential market. Investors also can pre-order the new product in exchange for arranged levels of financial assistance (Assadi, 2018). Typically, there is anticipation in reward-based that investors may be familiarized with the product development procedure through continuing updates and acquire the opportunity to communicate directly with the inventing entrepreneurs.

Role of Investors

Investors are a significant source of innovation for crowdfunding institutions. Apart from their financial support, they make an essential contribution to creation of knowledge through their collaboration (Hervé & Schwienbacher, 2018). Knowledge formation through relations with investors is a vital factor in getting to understand subsequent innovation. Particularly, financiers are primarily engaged, prime endorsers who offer guidance, plot ideas, and even judgment throughout the process of product development.

There are also some instances where investors are called upon to play a critical role in putting together design choices. While innovation studies may suggest that relations with consumers during product development process should have a favorable impact, there is also the possibility for interactions with investors to be detrimental overtime (Stanko & Henard, 2017). It can be overpowering for slim startups to attempt to connect with so many obstinate financiers. Trying to integrate their input may prolong product development redirect the inventing merchants from their purposeful priorities.

Stage to Crowdfund

The optimal time of injecting investors’ voices in new product development conversation depends on the crowdfunding form. For instance, equity-based investors would possibly prefer to finance a commodity that is at a subsequent phase in the process of development (Salomon, 2018). This approach would better assure that any practical and organizational challenges could be controlled. On the contrary, reward-based investors often value being in the innovation process of product development, opting to experience the whole process. 

The allocation of product development exhaustive at the period of crowdfunding may potentially affect investors’ implications of interest. One may argue that open search is especially significant in prime phases of product development since perceptions can be developed by incorporating or re-linking varying concepts from outside the firm (Stanko & Henard, 2017). On the other hand, there is also confirmation that open search could be favorable at a later phase of development, once the inventing industrialist has an idea that is more developed. Comprehending the timing indications of investor involvement is critical to a more extensive interpretation of crowdfunding and innovation.

Technical Limitations and the Usability of Blockchain Technologies

Transactions of currencies between companies or individuals are often incorporated and managed by third party corporations. Hence, executing a digital payment or transfer of currency requires a financial institution or credit card facilitator as an intermediary to finalize a transaction (Yli-Huumo, Ko, Choi, Park, & Smolander, 2016). Additionally, an exchange causes a charge from the credit card organization or bank. This transaction system is generally centralized, and all the information and data are normally managed and controlled by third parties instead of the two principal structures involved.

Blockchain technology has therefore been advanced to resolve the above issue. Its objective is to develop a decentralized setting where a third party has no control of the data and transactions. Blockchain is a an allocated database provision that manages a continually growing files of data registers that are verified by the intersections partaking in it  (Mani, CISA, CISM, & Six Sigma Black Belt, 2017). The data is documented in a collective ledger, inclusive of information of all completed transactions (Udokwu, Kormiltsyn, Thangalimodzi, & Norta, 2018).

Information about all transactions ever concluded in Blockchain is dispensed and accessible to all intersections (Fernandez-Carames & Fraga-Lamas, 2018). This facet makes the structure more straightforward than integrated transactions dealing with third parties. Additionally, the intersections in Blockchain are all unidentified, which makes it increasingly safe for other junctions to verify the transactions. Bitcoin was the primary application that familiarized Blockchain technology, and it generated a decentralized setting for cryptocurrency, where members can exchange and buy products using digital money (Crosby, Nachiappan, Pattanayak, Verma, & Kalyanaraman, 2015).

Challenges of Blockchain Technology

Although Blockchain may seem to be an appropriate solution for carrying out transactions by utilizing cryptocurrencies, there are still some technical difficulties and limitations that require investigation and addressing. 

Latency

In order to create adequate protection for a Bitcoin negotiation, at the moment it takes about ten minutes to conclude a single transaction. To attain effectiveness in security, a longer duration of time may be needed to be consumed on a block, due to the fact that it has to exceed the cost of dual spending tackles (Yli-Huumo et al., 2016). Double-spending is the consequence of spending of money successfully more than one single time.

Bitcoin safeguards against dual spending by confirming each and every transaction computed to Blockchain, to affirm that transactions inputs have not been previously spent. This causes latency to be an enormous topic in Blockchain at the moment (Akram, 2017) Making a block and verifying the negotiation should only take a few seconds, while ensuring security is maintained (Staples et al., 2017). To conclude a transaction, such as in VISA, it only takes a couple of seconds, a vast advantage in comparison with Blockchain.

Size and Bandwidth

As at 2016, the Blockchain size in the Bitcoin system was over fifty thousand megabytes. As soon as the throughput rises to the VISA level, Blockchain could potentially advance 214PB every year (Staples et al., 2017). The Bitcoin society presumes that a block is one megabyte in size, and is developed every ten minutes. Hence, there is a constraint in the number of negotiations that can be managed. If the Blockchain requires commanding more transactions, the bandwidth and size issues need to be resolved.

The Rise of Fintech: Advantages and Disadvantages 

Financial technology or Fintech is a phrase used to refer to institutions that offer contemporary technology in the banking sector. Such firms have become a distinguishable tendency since 2010. Fintech organizations are mostly medium, micro, or small-sized companies that lack a lot of equity, but possess a concise conception of how to establish new or ways of enhancing existing amenities in the money market (Saksonova & Kuzmina-Merlino, 2017). Generally, these are financial technology startups, the figure which is continually rising; an estimation of more than ten thousand firms.

As a regulation, business financing and Crowdfunding are utilized to fund Fintech organizations. Some researchers also argue that Fintech startups enhance the effectiveness of the financial structure (Varga, 2017). There are two key reasons for the development of financial technology firms. First, the international financial crisis that occurred in 2008 has clearly indicated to consumers drawbacks of the conventional banking system that caused the disaster. Second, the inception of current technologies that aided in providing progression, ease of use, swiftness and lower charges of financial amenities (Alt, Beck, & Smits, 2018).

The use of Fintech facilities has attracted a broad market – significantly all the adults across the globe. These individuals are prospective users of Fintech facilities. The rise in number of adults around the globe, who for diverse reasons are unwilling to or cannot use conventional banking amenities, contributes to the emergence of financial technology which presents similar services, but is more accelerated, more affordable, and more lucrative than banks (Frame, Wall, & White, 2018). For commercial institutions, these trends equate to an increment in functional risks and long-lasting risks.

Advantages of Fintech

Consistent advancement of information technology has given Fintech firms a competitive edge over traditional banks and its get more intense each year. For instance, lucrative competition of Fintech organizations with commercial institutions is manifested with immense volumes of negotiations in proximate cooperation with the globe’s largest trading forums such as Alibaba and eBay (Saksonova & Kuzmina-Merlino, 2017). In addition, after the 2008 financial crisis where banks refused to loan certain crowds of borrowers including small-sized enterprises due to high risks, financial technology companies took advantage of this and worked on the P2P model to provide these ‘left-out’ firms a platform for linking lenders with borrowers (Haddad & Hornuf, 2016).

Another competitive advantage that Fintech institutions have is they possess an aggressive value program in the recent innovation of robo-advising, where a person’s investment portfolio is opted for by algorithms that give customers an investment plan that correlates with their investment options and risk outline (Riemer et al., 2017). Yearly maintenance charges are also lesser than those acquired in commercial institutions as Fintech firms dispense free assets of customers in deposits, stock and bond portfolios, convert currencies, pursue to constrain risks and obtain credit lines for the properties.

Fintech organizations offer services that were previously only accessible to the wealthy available to the broad population. In the line of personal finance management, financial technology firms such as Credit Karma permit clients to obtain their credit rating and history, and keep accounts of all customers’ financial commodities – a free amenity (Jagtiani & Lemieux, 2017). Similar products in commercial institutions would cost up to one hundred US dollars. Fintech firms also provide an online forum for managers to control budgets, reports, and invoices.

Disadvantages of Fintech

Entry Barriers

When companies experience imminent barriers to penetrating a market, competitiveness can deteriorate, lowering innovation and increasing prices. Even though a section of the problem is plainly the great amount of regulation, financial technology has experienced two more barriers of entry: traditional bank’s capability to bar access to market and the challenge in acquiring license from the federal bank (Loo, 2018). Fintech operations can be limited by legacy financial corporations through data control. It is important to note that consultative Fintechs depend on accessibility to both general and personal data.

Some commercial institutions’ reaction has been to limit or bar Fintech’s access to clients’ accounts, hence making it more difficult for them to provide altered advice (Loo, 2018). The second key section of entry hurdles comes from government agencies that allocate licenses. These licenses are significant partly because they issue banks expropriation from many state regulations. The affliction of having to cooperate with fifty varying states’ regulations and financial institutions’ evaluation processes would be cumbersome. For instance, to transfer funds by themselves as nonbanks, they would be needed to acquire money transfer licenses from all states (Loo, 2018).

Smart Cities Emergence and the Role of ICT

Smart city is metropolitan area that utilizes various kinds of electronic data accumulation sensors to supply information as well as control resources and assets effectively, and the concept incorporates ICT and different physical instruments linked to the network. The description of smart cities is categorized based on differing perspectives in a number of research publications (Arafah & Winarso, 2017). Modern technology and ICT are viewed as the main drivers in the concept.

Information and communication technology can advance the effectiveness of cities’ undertakings and services, whereas Internet of Things (IoT) can link residents to the amenities. However, smart cities inventions should not be restricted to IoT and ICT, as they comprise all modern technologies and the information within digital structures (Kummitha & Crutzen, 2017). Furthermore, there has not been a clear definition for the smart cities notion; it is the complementary answers that create the whole concept.

The first idea for smart city came into view in the 1990s where it was described as the era of technologies and transfiguration of conventional cities and state-of-the-art parks. It is a worldwide city of distributed, immensely collaborative economic nodes connected by large networks or highways, airports, and communications (Hasbini, Eldabi, & Aldallal, 2018). Another analogy is “intelligent city” utilizing ICT, systems held together for fiber optics, and satellite. Such cities are occupied by “intelligence processors” active in swift information exchanges.

Components of Smart Cities

Smart cities consist of six key components. First and foremost, smart individuals are the cornerstone for these cities. Smart may not necessary mean education of a higher level; it is about persons with access to technologies and information that may become more innovative and broad-minded to create inventions and analyze unique ways of manufacturing things (Caird & Hallett, 2018). Secondly, by fostering the invention and promoting business development, urban development and employment, smart economy may deliver higher caliber and well paying employment opportunities for residents in order to enhance their standards of living. Thirdly, smart governance guarantees the sequence for the management of society and ensures the availability of services and information to citizens. 

Smart governance is the controller for these cities that supports the effectiveness of the services and resources of cities. Fourthly, smart environment accommodate residents’ requirements and preferences to enhance their experience (Datta, 2018). Fifth is smart connection which is primarily about being linked, as it is about mobility system and transportation as well as accessibility of information and availability of technologies to communities. Finally, smart living is basically about delivering opportunities of flourishing lifestyles for all inhabitants, including quality education, healthcare, and security (Miklian & Hoelscher, 2017).

Smart Cities’ Funding Management

The most common financing sources include, firstly, government-level funding where the finances come from federal-sponsored agencies, and this is normally the first option for the developers of these cities (Chamoso, González-Briones, Rodríguez, & Corchado, 2018). Second, local-level financing which emanate from sources at the local level, such as public development bureau. On the other hand, community-based funding is an option for programs financing and the investments comprise of large enterprises invested in a communal setting, and target particular communities within the metropolitan or enhancement areas. Other funding may come in the form of loans from commercial banks, partnerships, as well as private financing.

ICT development and the Challenges Faced

ICT development has played a fundamental role in leading technological transformation across the globe. It has had an impact on the economy, warfare, trade, identity formation, and political mobilization. In addition, it has contested conventional media and public networks as individuals have been able to obtain and share new information sources (Lomas & McLeod, 2017). The function of social networking sites, Internet of Things, Blockchain, Crowdfunding, artificial intelligence, and drones are significantly altering the world we live in.

Additionally, ICT has been asserted to function over and even surpass borders and political jurisdictions. Network systems can be coordinated to allow flow of data and storage to occupy multiple regimens concurrently. The delivery is supported and controlled by specialists who are accustomed to taking part with and promoting change (Htun, 2019). Global complexes have moved business frameworks in terms of universal supply chains fro products and services. The ICT effect and value is rapidly growing, thus creating more employment opportunities and providing main infrastructures with which the society is sustained (Yan, Shi, & Yang, 2018).

The Challenges of Emerging ICTs

Despite the many innovations and positive technological transformations resulting from ICT development, there has been a love of skepticism with regards to the triumph of initiatives that are ICT-led and concerns toward their substantial and possible challenges that have been raised in academic literature, thus, the evaluations of the effects of ICT intercession on development have remained inconclusive, demonstrating the need to conduct further studies (Dey & Ali, 2016). Some of the challenges are discussed below.

Resources for Empowerment in Governance and Democracy

The disparate distribution of informative and communicative resources that may seem significant to support democratic procedures of governance is a key issue in many areas. Inequalities in information resources may lead to the constraints of public involvement with legislative procedures that are important to democracy (Mansell, Avgerou, Quah, & Silverstone, 2009). It is common for people to gain is communal capital simply due to their interactions in online societies.  The assurance of e-democracy is usually said to be based on the actuality that latest ICTs can promote a dual-way communication between a government and its citizens.

However, since the 1970, several ardent debates have risen on whether most of the citizens would want to access online platforms and whether legislators will have a predisposition to listen. Blogging and online voting during elections are among the numerous developments that keep on fueling debates on whether the utilization of information and communication technologies generate new potentials for a public scope in which logical debate can take place  (Mansell, Avgerou, Quah, & Silverstone, 2009).

The utilization of ICTs is additionally creating new and disparate distributions of threats. Unanswered questions are many with regard to the nature of ways and means that are required to enable people to protect themselves against such threats and the role the government plays in securing the interests of its citizens. The topic of resources is elevated in a varying context by researchers in relation to the dissimilar resources accessible at various structures of government for financing in e-government facilities and the consequences of this in the way these amenities are created and executed (Stahl, Timmermans, & Flick, 2016).

ICTs and Literacy

Every moment in the development of both information and communication technologies since the writing inception, has expressed new and various potentiality for communication, and contested communities and societies to retaliate in innovative and subsequently non-specialized ways. Literacy in all forms involves more than a mere set of technical skills (Stahl et al., 2016). Partaking in the commodities of an intricately intervened world, and that of information overburden, is not a matter of getting to know one’s way across and possessing a particular degree of competence.

On the other hand, it involves more than that, including the ability to meaningfully participate in a dialogue which is communal, greatly interceded, technologically enlightened, and significantly powerful. Literacy is also about making sense, of inventing and communicating comprehensions in a universe of immense discord and obscurity, one in which information and communication technologies both generate and aid in resolving. Also, literacy is about participating and protecting, as people challenged with the perplexing and unintelligible existence of the public, require the skills to locate, occupy, and utilize the resources that are essential for citizenship, an adequate economic and financial level and sustainability, as well as the general standards of everyday life (Olofsson, Lindberg, & Fransson, 2018).

Internet of Things: Opportunities for SMEs

The Internet of Things (IoT) is considered by the framework program if the European Union as a section of Future Internet. IoT has rapidly risen as a crucial industrial subject in the universal trend, and is expected to play a critical role in both industrial standard shift and future innovation and management change (Shin, 2017). Internet of Things is a significantly interlinked system of things. It’s a swift developing discipline that represents the concept of all things that are attached together through an information system. The concept of ‘interconnected’ primarily means that every entity involved in the structure has identification, capabilities to access and gather information from the actual world and convey the information in the virtual universe (Prayoga & Abraham, 2017).

The Internet of Things realizes and generates the Big Data. Big Data contains anything that is documented and can be controlled or uncontrolled, and can come from multiple sources such as hardware sensors and web interaction. For instance, firms like UPS that distributes over sixteen million packages daily need to manage and enhance effectiveness and reduce environmental implication; hence they are placing sensors that collect information about the statuses of seat belts, engines, and partition door operation to generate a collection of information per day (Müller & Voigt, 2018).

The compelling force energy behind IoT is effectiveness and innovation. Improvement is a process that should never stop. In addition, individuals produce completely new commodities in order to enhance areas of life that were thought to be otherwise. Perhaps the multiple things linked and the swiftness which IoT develops can show how it is a great deal. The number of individuals linked to the internet is high and it continues to grow on a daily basis. Thus, Internet of Things will continually serve individuals and firms alike (Rachinger, Rauter, Müller, Vorraber, & Schirgi, 2018).

Opportunities for SMEs

Network Integration

Network integration is an essential aspect of innovation due to the fact that SMEs lack resources. These networks enable the small firms to access resources and partition their costs and risks (Pierre & Fernandez, 2018). For network integration to be a success, the small firms require the capacity to develop and maintain cooperative relationships, and the fundamental capacity to utilize essentials presented by network relationships. In addition, through network integration, SMEs are able to cooperate with both private and public partners, even though they are purported to opt for networks directly connected to the market instead of horizontal partners such as a communal research center (Faizal & Zaidi, 2017).

 Customer and User Integration

Users and clients are believed to be an essential source of invention performance and SMEs appear to prefer them when incorporating commerce into their innovation procedures. SMEs can use them to bring candid knowledge to the company (Lee et al., 2018). Assimilating users and customers into the process of innovation provides the firms new concepts and new discernments to understand their needs better. In addition, this integration enables the company to assert that they are acting upon market needs thus avoiding possible losses resulting from market failure. 

Institutional Support

Support at the bureaucratic level, the invention system where SMEs are set in provides resources and knowledge section of innovation procedure. Practical or financial support can be provided by public institutions for innovation. In fact, bureaucratic support fixated on these small firms’ competitiveness and universal development has been broadly utilized by public institutions for close to forty years. This backing depends on financial support via tax incentives and candid funding, and networking, coaching, and amenities support (Lindström, Elliasson, Hermansson, Blomstedt, & Kyosti, 2018). Human resources that possess an extensive knowledge of public support structures can effectively use institutional support for their innovation procedures.

Conclusion

The evolution of ICT has significantly changed the lives of basically all individuals across the world over the last ten decades. This change has also affected all sectors ranging from economic, social to financial sectors. Essentially, this has led to technological innovations that have been vigorously employed thus resulting to the emergence of new inventions. These innovations have resulted to great fundamental changes in the financial sector that can be termed as a positive contribution to its development.

For instance, Crowdfunding is one implication of ICT development where the use of internet platforms has been of immense benefits to firms that are seeking financial aid. The online forums provide a base where such firms can collaboratively communicate with a large crowd of potential lenders in order to get funding in small amounts in exchange for rewards or equity in the firms. Additionally, the companies can comfortable seek opinions of users who are also potential lenders on their new product development procedures. This gives them an opportunity to reduce risks and improve their products.

Another great ICT innovation is Blockchain which was developed to provide a decentralized of money transfer or currency exchange system that does not need a third party to finalize the transaction. With this, individuals do not necessarily have to visits banks in order to carry out transactions that would have exorbitant costs. However, this service takes a relatively longer time to process and conclude a single transaction, causing a possible inconvenience to users. Working on ways to reduce the time frame required to complete the transaction process would be of benefit to the customers and users.

The emergence of smart cities where such metropolitan areas use ICT innovations to foster transfer of information and communication systems is a candid proof of ICT development. One would imagine that with the swift growth and increase of such cities, the world would soon become a smart globe, where technology is not only essential, but accessible to all individuals across the globe. Funding for these cities is mostly handled by government agencies, community-based institutions, private entities, and partnerships. Despite the challenges faced by ICT development, it has significantly improved the financial sector in terms of accessing financial services as well as credit facilities and information availability.

Information and Communication Technology and the role played by its development is a significant contribution to literature in terms of adding more knowledge to students and researchers on contemporary issues in the finance sector, as well as address several matters that firms may face as a result of these developments. In addition, this article attempts to bridge the gap on ICT development matters that have still not yet been explored by researchers. It is therefore important to note that further studies need to be conducted. Business entities such as small-sized firms can also use the information provided above to understand more concepts and use some of the ideas to improve their businesses.

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