BEYOND RELIGION: CROSS-FAITH DIFFUSION OF ISLAMIC FINTECH AMONG SMES IN A NON-MUSLIM-MAJORITY ECONOMY, EVIDENCE FROM GHANA

Abstract

The dominant assumption in Islamic Fintech literature is that adoption intent is driven primarily by religious identity, positioning it as a Muslim-market product. This paper challenges that assumption with an exploratory convergent parallel mixed-methods study of 150 purposively sampled urban SME owners and managers across Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale, Ghana combined with eight semi-structured expert contextual interviews. We find that overall adoption intent does not differ significantly between Christian (mean = 3.60) and Muslim (mean = 3.86) respondents (t = −1.19, p > 0.05, Cohen’s d = 0.215, 95% CI [−0.12, 0.55]), and that religious identity is a non-significant predictor of adoption intent after controlling for digital literacy, firm size, awareness, and ethical compliance orientation (β = −0.196, p > 0.05, 95% CI [−0.60, 0.21]). A Bayesian regression analysis yields BF₀₁ = 3.8 for the religion predictor, providing positive evidence for the null hypothesis (Rouder et al., 2009). The most direct adoption intent item formally satisfies two one-sided tests (TOST) for equivalence within ±0.5 points (t₁ = 2.11, t₂ = −2.20); the composite TOST was not met at current sample size, indicating that broader composite equivalence requires replication with a larger sample. Digital literacy (β = 0.479, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.271, 0.687]) is the dominant predictor of adoption intent; trust in Islamic Finance mechanisms (r = 0.83, p < 0.001) is the strongest bivariate correlate. These findings carry significant implications for how Islamic Fintech is regulated, marketed, and scaled in non-Muslim-majority developing economies.