Cashless payment and financial inclusion
Year: 2026
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
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.
Source: Journal of Financial Economics
Author: Shumiao Ouyang
Institution: University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Management Information Systems
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,740
Funders: International Monetary Fund, Harvard University, Texas A and M University, Nottingham Trent University, Missouri State University, Arkansas Economic Development Commission, Bank of Canada, University College London, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, Community Foundation of Randolph County
Awards: G2008855851, G4629656566, G6942021628
OpenAlex ID: W7140192146