Digital currencies make transfers in digital markets, providing transaction participants with many advantages: easy access to markets, maintaining the identity of participants in transfer transactions, even their application is constantly expanding when buying new and innovative goods. Banks are an integral and significant part of this turnover, which gives them additional advantages and direct effects and exposes them to additional difficulties and dangers. The increased interest in them was noted mainly due to the continuous growth of their market rate and the additional growth of cryptocurrency extraction. Most transactions with them are based on the regulations of the applicable law. Still, the possibility of being the object of a crime has provoked a backlash from financial supervisors to protect the rights of other market participants and especially banks as the most accessible of all. Although it is a legal system in place to prevent banking institutions from being involved in money laundering operations, digital currencies are now a new opportunity with the specific advantages that ensure their smooth transfer to the network. The leading business companies such as TESLA have offered the opportunity to buy electric cars with digital currencies, with the growing demand for cryptocurrency services. Partly aided by the rising value of essential natural resources, important components for building information infrastructure, and the Covid-19 pandemic, significant financial institutions have permanently established themselves in digital markets such as JPMorgan, BNY Mellon, and Morgan Stanley, BlackRock and many others. Despite the targeted actions of state regulatory institutions, whose duty is to ensure the public good “cybersecurity”, the mass entry into these markets leaves consumers relatively unprotected. Money laundering or terrorist financing often provokes crises among regulatory institutions because they are usually accompanied by arms deals, drug trafficking, tax evasion, and others, as well as tax fraud, terrorism, and drug trafficking. A current application of digital currencies is their use to pay for services related to cyber attacks on financial institutions, objects of national security, etc. when the entire population suffers the damage. The new roles of financial institutions in the digital markets strengthen the notion of compliance as possible risk threats, realizing through compliance functions to automate and implement the integrated approach to all types of risk that accompanies the movement of digital financial assets. For some banking intermediaries, this has changed their cybersecurity strategy.

The aim of the present study is to recreate the new role that academic publishing houses perform in the conditions of digital transformation and the growing number and volume of scientific publications in the conditions of oligopolistic competition, of structuring the ecosystem of academic publishing as an opportunity to build a network of mutually intersecting interests. The chosen approach analyzes the dynamic environment in which academic publishing houses function under the influence of subsequent crises and changes in the business model of accumulation and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Bearing in mind the special role of academic publication and distribution, it has a key role in the exchange of scientific knowledge, expanding the possibilities of access and use of already created and distributed scientific production to increase academic institutions’ competitiveness. Academic publishing and knowledge dissemination are facing the need for digital transformation and redesign of the access system. Only in such a case will it realize its practical goals of creating added value and return on the resources invested in the system. This change in the role of academic publishing makes it relevant. It strengthens its contribution to limiting the opportunities for abuse of authors’ copyright on the results of their scientific research. Academic publishing and distribution form a changing and relatively new field that, in the current market conditions, is tasked with satisfying the interests of universities, researchers and end-users for access to scientific knowledge. The main challenges faced by academic publishing include: the provision of open access to scientific information; the protection of intellectual property; the realization of economic efficiency based on invested resources and increased competitiveness. In the end, academic publishing houses are economic agents, using various funding sources, and hence realize to varying degrees the effect of their improved market positioning. In this way, this industry contributes to the promotion of scientific knowledge and copyright protection for researchers, the possibility of comparisons and new searches, and for investors in the publishing business − to receive a real return for the resources invested. The present study is tasked with giving a new perspective to the business of academic publishing and distribution as a socially significant ecosystem subject to basic economic laws and its role in sharing scientific knowledge to improve the welfare of society.

This paper aims to show the need to study both classical and modern theories in business ethics. It is necessary because social relations in production change, as do production conditions, the relationship between owners and workers, employees. The aim of the article is also to demonstrate the possible deviations from the natural, basic principles of ethical behavior in business and to look for opportunities to regulate them and limit the opportunities for their manifestation. This study has an epistemological character, dedicated to studying the evolution of fundamental ethical theories explaining the interaction between subjects in the ethical ecosystem. In developing the article, descriptive analysis was used to identify, analyze, and summarize the main features of poodle theories in business ethics. This paper has its theoretical basis of a rich category of tools and classical theories in aesthetics; new business ethics theories are being developed as an inalienable part of the ethical ecosystem. The evolution of the productive forces has had its irreversible impact on the ethical relations in the social system and on each business unit as a whole. The interrelations between the main religions professed by mankind − Christianity, Judaism and Islamic religion with the main category assessing the return on investment, namely the interest rate, are analyzed. The conclusions have been drawn about this type of income in the older religions and newer religions. Basic new business ethics theories are analyzed, such as the Theory of moral hazard, Agency Theory, Diamond’s Theory of delegated monitoring, Rent-Seeking. Research on the evolution of basic business economics theories is usually done based on theoretical analysis and much less based on specific business cases. Here is presented the manifestation of modern theories in business ethics, particular cases of changes in the state of business ecosystems and possibility that basis can also serve as a legal and regulatory initiative to precisely regulate these deviations and their sanction. The chosen form of research is sharing the opinions of the author of the study. In this article, the author seeks the connection, the integration of ethics in the functioning of the business system due to the severance of the direct relationship between owners and employees and the emergence of intermediaries as agents to whom decision-making rights are delegated. The severance of this relationship is at the heart of the evolutionary development of the ethical business side in the context of existing constraints. Keywords: Business Ethics, Moral Hazard, Rent-Seeking, Diamond Theory, Agency Theory.

The relevance of examining financial inclusion and electronic payment systems is increasing in the context of economic and digital inequalities, which shape trust, fairness, and the ethical functioning of contemporary financial ecosystems across different institutional environments. However, existing research does not sufficiently explain how these inequalities influence the relationship between digital financial development and actual inclusion outcomes, particularly in terms of participation and equitable access within financial ecosystems. The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of electronic payment systems, internet accessibility, and economic development on financial inclusion through a comparative perspective of the European Union, Bulgaria, and Kazakhstan. The empirical basis comprises time-series data for the period 2010–2024, obtained from central banks and international financial databases, reflecting the evolution of digital financial services, macroeconomic conditions, and the diffusion of financial access across the analysed economies. The study employs econometric time-series techniques, including the Augmented Dickey–Fuller test for stationarity, correlation analysis, and Granger causality testing, implemented using EViews software. The results reveal a strong positive relationship between financial inclusion and gross domestic product per capita (0.961), as well as between financial inclusion and internet accessibility (0.828), indicating the structural importance of economic and infrastructural factors. In contrast, the relationship between payment system penetration and financial inclusion is weak (–0.017), suggesting that infrastructure alone does not ensure inclusive outcomes. Granger causality results demonstrate only limited short-term effects of digital payment usage on financial inclusion (p = 0.082 for Bulgaria and p = 0.109 for Kazakhstan), while no significant long-term causal relationships are observed. These findings indicate that financial inclusion depends primarily on active participation in digital financial systems rather than mere availability of infrastructure, highlighting the role of behavioural and institutional conditions. The study contributes to understanding how reducing economic and digital inequalities, strengthening trust, and ensuring fair access can support the ethical development of financial ecosystems and inform policy and regulatory practices in diverse economic contexts.

The growth of digital platforms generates strong network effects and dynamics of all winners, which disrupts systemic growth and further stimulates competition between them. Despite the positive effects, under certain conditions, these same functions make the currently operating platforms vulnerable to competitive strategic moves through platforms where participants can add value for themselves and at the same time avoid pre-investment in value added generation. In this analysis, we use an interpretive synthesis of different theoretical concepts of platform business to theorize these strategies as a new category and their distinctive features. Overall, the study demonstrates the potential for unconventional and opportunistic strategies to compete on platforms that extend beyond more traditional ones, such as network quality, diversity and size.

In this article, the general stages of the banking sector’s transition to a free market are examined in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the effects of the last crisis on the financial and economic system of these countries. The process of this change is different and is important for their integration into the common European banking market, as well as their influence on the development of the economies of these countries as a whole. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to compare the processes of change in organizational structure and the difficulty of integrating these banking sectors with the banking sectors of Western European countries. The focus is also on assessing the impact of the global financial and economic crisis on their sustainable development. The databases of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been used to establish a common pattern in some sectors - the growth of non-performing loans during the crisis, it also implies a concerted effort to overcome this important indicator of their sustainability and behavior.