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Cashless payment and financial inclusion

Shumiao Ouyang

Journal of Financial Economics2026https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2026.104277article
FT50UTD24AJG 4*ABDC A*
Weight
0.50

Abstract

This paper investigates how cashless payment affects credit access for underserved populations using data from Alipay, a leading Chinese BigTech platform with over 1 billion users that offers a wide range of financial services. By exploiting the staggered rollout of Alipay-bundled shared bikes across cities as a natural experiment and analyzing a representative Alipay user sample, I find that cashless payment adoption increases credit access by 56.3% and that a 1% rise in payment flow increases credit lines by 0.41%. These effects are stronger for less educated and older individuals, who have traditionally faced greater barriers to accessing financial services.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2026.104277

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@article{shumiao2026,
  title        = {{Cashless payment and financial inclusion}},
  author       = {Shumiao Ouyang},
  journal      = {J.~Financ.~Econ.},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2026.104277},
}

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Cashless payment and financial inclusion

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

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