Beyond Technology Acceptance in Islamic Banking: A Systematic Literature Review of Digital Utility, Security, and Financial Literacy

Fifteen years of digital innovation have washed through Islamic banking, yet the research conversation still turns on whether customers intend to adopt a service, not on what they become once they have. We synthesise the evidence on three constructs that acceptance work tends to pool: digital utility, security, and financial literacy in Shariah-compliant digital banking. The review follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 protocol: 171 records were identified through database searching, citation chaining, and a targeted historical supplement, and 164 peer-reviewed studies published between 2011 and 2025 passed inclusion. Analysis ran in two layers, a keyword map of the whole corpus and a full-text thematic synthesis of the fifty most relevant studies. The layers converge on an asymmetry that acceptance models miss. Security behaves as a hygiene-type condition, building institution-based trust while educating nobody; platform utility works developmentally, its repeated use accumulating into financial literacy. We formalise the two routes as the Asymmetric Digital Engagement Framework, join institution-based trust theory with social cognitive theory, and convert the asymmetry into testable hypotheses for Shariah-compliant markets. Banks and regulators should treat security assurance and capability-building design as separate instruments rather than substitutes.