FinTech-Enabled Cash Waqf: Effective Intermediary of Social Finance

Abstract

This paper discusses how FinTech, financial services enhanced by high utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT), can enable potential capability of cash waqf, especially in the context of social finance. Waqf has played a role of social finance including earlier eras in the history of Islam. With the rapid progress of ICT and growing population of personal communication devices such as cell phones, smartphones, and computers, cash waqf will create huge social value when it is enhanced with ICT, which the author calls “FinTech-enabled cash waqf.” This is not just a conceptual dream, but it is becoming a reality. This paper also proposes possible expanded forms of FinTech-enabled cash waqf, including microfinance, as socially valuable financial systems. Required legal treatments and other necessary conditions are discussed as well from a practical point of view, including the purpose of being a reference for policy makers and social venture entrepreneurs. Academic considerations of the FinTech-enabled cash waqf are also argued, especially regarding a typical criticism against the current practice of Islamic finance from theory-based academic scholars. This process identifies the academic and religious significance of the FinTech-enabled cash waqf, not just as a social form of financial transactions. In the last section, the paper concludes that the FinTech-enabled cash waqf can contribute to socio-economic development in an Islamic community.