Abstract
Globally small and medium enterprises make a big impact on the national economic growth of the country as well as the employment it creates. Similarly, the developing economy of the United Arab Emirates is largely dependent on SMEs for growth in countries’ GDP. Many factors like financial crisis, funding availability, and trust are creating a downturn for SMEs to obtain competitive interest rates on bank loans to grow their business. The aims to find if the null hypothesis – “High-interest rates provided by banks to SME's are leading to a loss in business opportunities” is valid or not. The research was conducted to gain
insight on government initiatives, bank support, and SME business impacts through a quantitative study which resulted in proving the null hypothesis are true, where SMEs in the United Arab Emirates are facing challenges with high-interest rates for business loans from banks as well as other financial institutions. The secondary aim of the study was to also gain insight into how SME professionals think about reaching out to digital platforms in order to acquire a business loan, where facilities such as crowdfunding could be available to raise capital. The results provided a unique understanding of SMEs’ strong interest in digital crowdfunding platforms to fulfill their lending needs.
