Digital financial inclusion. Visualizing the academic literature

Abstract

Financial inclusion, which requires granting an affordable, adequate and widespread access to a sufficient range of financial products and services, has often been considered one of the cornerstones of social development, as it can contribute to poverty reduction, narrow the income gap, lead to wiser financial decisions, help to enlarge savings, increase the productive investment and foster a greater gender equality. Information and communication technologies have shown a major potential to contribute to financial inclusion, giving birth to digital financial inclusion. Using bibliometric techniques, this paper disentangles the intellectual structure of the research on digital financial inclusion, revealing the most influential sources, authors and areas inside this research stream. The results of this paper show that we are dealing with a critical demand of current society, which is attracting a growing attention of the academic literature and should be in the spotlight of both private and public institutions.