MOBILE FINANCIAL SERVICES AND FINANCIAL INCLUSION: THE MEDIATING EFFECT OF ACCESSIBILITY ON FINANCIAL ACCESS AND INCLUSIVE GROWTH
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Although mobile financial services have spread faster than any preceding retail financial innovation, adoption is not necessary with inclusion, and the process by which MFIs can turn to the latter often is ambiguously stated estimates are that approximately 1.3 billion adults are not included in the financial system, and that evidence introduces "adoption" rather than "inclusion" as part of the process. Among the issues the study explores is whether accessibility is a moderating effect between mobile services intensity and financial inclusion, and if so, whether this effect varies by income level and region. An annual balanced panel of 60 low- and middle-income economies yields 1,260 observations; composite indices of the three constructs are calculated via principal component analysis, indicators are normalized relative to the International Monetary Fund Financial Access Survey, World Bank Global Findex Database and World Development Indicators; the pathways are identified using two-way fixed-effects estimation, Driscoll-Kraay standard errors, the Sobel test and a country-cluster bootstrap with 5,000 replications. The results show that mobile financial services raise accessibility by 0.507 index points (p < 0.001) and that accessibility raises financial inclusion by 0.501 index points (p < 0.001), while the total effect of 0.446 splits into an indirect effect of 0.254 (Sobel statistic 8.42; bootstrap interval 0.198 to 0.311) and a direct effect of 0.193 (p < 0.001). The findings suggest that accessibility transmits 56.8 percent of the total effect, that transmission is strongest in South Asia and weakest where mobile money entered bank-dense markets, and that financial empowerment and poverty reduction track access to banking rather than adoption alone.
JEL Classification Codes: D14, G21, G23, O16, O33.
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