Evaluation of crowdfunding platforms from Islamic perspective

Crowdfunding platforms, together with the developing fintech system, offer an innovative financing service as an alternative to existing traditional methods. These platforms bring together entrepreneurs, companies and investors and provide them with the opportunity to realize their projects. In this context, the creation of crowdfunding platforms in line Islamic finance is important in terms of support social entrepreneurship, innovative ideas and businesses. In this study, the functioning of crowdfunding and examination of existing Islamic crowdfunding platforms are included, crowdfunding institutions in Turkey are evluated in terms of Islamic finance, and it is aimed to offer suggestions for the development of the Islamic crowdfunding ecosystem. Since the study used quantitative and qualitative data, the mixed research method was determined as the method of this study. In the qualitative aspect of the research, interviews were conducted with experts in this field in order to evaluate the suitability of current practices and to obtain their opinions for platforms compatible with Islamic finance. In the quantitative aspect of the research, it was aimed to analyze equity – based crowdfunding projects funded in Turkey within the scope of TKBB and AAOIFI standards and to examine the compliance of funded projects in terms of criteria. As a result of the research, evaluations were made by developing suggestions for the research questions based on the collected data. In the findings, audit and governance mechanism suggestions were presented for crowdfunding platforms compatible with Islamic finance and the problems of the platforms were evaluated. In terms of examining the compatibility of crowdfunding projects with Islamic finance, it was concluded that the current standards were not sufficient for all stages and that the financial indicators of the projects should be evaluated within the scope of crowdfunding - specific criteria.