Search Results (287)

Saudi Arabia experienced rapid convergence in women’s financial inclusion between 2014 and 2024, a period marked by the 2018–2019 reforms expanding women’s economic rights and the accelerated deployment of digital payment infrastructure. Using four waves of Global Findex microdata (2014, 2017, 2021, and 2024), this study estimates probability-weighted logit models with average marginal effects and decomposes gender gaps using nonlinear Kitagawa and Blinder–Oaxaca methods. Reform-era dynamics are examined by tracing changes in the gender gap across survey waves. The findings indicate that aggregate gender gaps in account ownership and digital payment usage narrowed substantially by 2024, with conditional gaps among employed adults no longer statistically significant, while sizable disparities persist among individuals outside the workforce. Decomposition results highlight increased female labor force participation as a key correlate of convergence, consistent with labor market integration playing a central role in women’s financial inclusion during the reform era. Full article

This article investigates whether increasing economic status through adopting digital payment capabilities in Delhi fosters economic and financial inclusion among urban women street vendors in Mahila Haat. Digital freedom is a new step forward in technology for everyone. Still, a woman not only balances the social responsibilities of childbearing, caring for her children and family, and struggling with economic issues, health issues, and undernourishment, but can also balance the household job of street vending to increase self-esteem and financial independence. This research work conducted a sampling survey and applied the Kruskal–Wallis H-test with a p-value (0.05) significance level by evaluating 11 variables to investigate the relationship between the digital capabilities and economic independence of street vendors in Mahila Haat (a women’s market where the vendors are all women) in the Red Fort area of New Delhi. UPI systems were created using measurements based on a five-point Likert scale to analyze different levels of satisfaction in clusters of digital capabilities on digital platforms. Further, the ordinary least squares (OLS) method was used to estimate quality of life and social happiness in the context of digital empowerment. Digital payment systems positively influence women’s empowerment. Women vendors can adopt digital payment methods, making them economically independent. The positive relationship between women vendors and customer satisfaction before UPI use and after UPI use is also analyzed. This research will be helpful for both government and non-government organizations to provide financial assistance, informational awareness, skill development training, and advocacy for gender equality to increase women’s empowerment. Full article

This study examines the impact of mobile wallet adoption on the profitability of a banking institution in Peru during the period 2021–2025, in a context of rapid digital transformation in financial services. The research adopted a quantitative, non-experimental, longitudinal, and explanatory design based on a single-bank case study. Mobile wallet adoption was measured through a synthetic index (IAD) constructed from five indicators using principal component analysis, while profitability was assessed through return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and aggregate monetary profitability. The effect of the IAD on profitability was estimated using generalized estimation equations with HAC-type robust standard errors. The results show that mobile wallet adoption exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on all three profitability indicators, with the strongest effect on aggregate monetary profitability, followed by ROE and ROA. These findings contribute to the literature by providing longitudinal evidence from an underexplored emerging economy and by showing that the financial effects of digital adoption differ according to the profitability measure considered. Overall, the study highlights the relevance of mobile wallet adoption as a strategic digital factor in banking performance within emerging financial contexts. Full article

This study offers an integrative and systematic examination of the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic, digital payment systems, and financial inclusion. To achieve this, it adopts a dual methodological approach that combines a PRISMA 2020-based systematic literature review with bibliometric analysis. The analysis covers a set of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2020 and 2025, using bibliometric mapping to explore the conceptual structure of the field, its main thematic clusters, and its temporal evolution. The findings indicate that COVID-19 acted as an external shock that accelerated the adoption of digital payment technologies. However, this acceleration did not automatically or uniformly lead to sustainable financial inclusion. Instead, digital payments emerge in the literature as an intermediate pathway linking the pandemic to financial inclusion outcomes under specific conditions. The strength and direction of this process depend on factors such as structural readiness, regulatory quality, digital infrastructure, levels of trust, and financial and digital literacy. Bibliometric results reveal strong conceptual convergence around three core themes—COVID-19, Digital Payments, and Financial Inclusion—forming a cohesive knowledge structure. Over time, the literature progresses from describing the crisis itself, to analyzing digital operational responses and finally to assessing longer-term inclusion and development outcomes. Overall, the study clarifies the interactive nature of the digital payments–financial inclusion nexus and proposes an integrative interpretive framework that can guide future research and support the design of more inclusive and resilient digital financial policies in post-crisis contexts. Full article

Digital literacy is widely promoted as enabling later-life inclusion, but its potential to generate trust-related vulnerabilities remains insufficiently examined, particularly in rapidly ageing societies. Using nationally representative data from the 2022 China Family Panel Studies including 1583 adults aged 60 and above, this study examines whether digital literacy is associated with older adults’ trust in strangers, which is interpreted here as a form of trust vulnerability in low-verifiability interactions. In this study, trust vulnerability is operationalised through respondents’ self-reported trust in strangers, while digital literacy is operationalised through behavioural competences spanning information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, content creation, digital transactions, and problem-solving. OLS regression models with Huber–White robust standard errors are employed. The findings indicate that higher levels of digital literacy are positively associated with stronger trust in strangers, suggesting that competence may heighten older adults’ inclination to trust and increase exposure to digital risks. This association is driven primarily by functional competences, with mobile payment use and problem-solving skills showing the largest and most consistent associations. By contrast, subjective well-being and perceived platform security show no significant mediating roles. The study recommends integrating functional training, trust calibration and risk-recognition education, alongside interpretable and verifiable safeguards that make security more visible to older adults. Full article

Using transaction cost economics (TCE) and agency theory, this paper examines how blockchain, smart contracts, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) reconfigure financial services across payments, wealth management, real estate, and corporate governance. Three research questions are addressed: (1) What are the quantifiable efficiency gains from blockchain-based real-time settlement compared with legacy systems? (2) How do blockchain technologies reduce intermediation and agency costs in wealth management and real estate? (3) Finally, to what extent do DAOs resolve or transform traditional corporate governance problems? By combining a present-value model calibrated to U.S. Automated Clearing House (ACH) data ($86.2 trillion in annual volume), comparative institutional analysis, and synthesis of empirical evidence from pilot implementations and on-chain governance metrics, this paper makes three principal contributions. First, real-time settlement yields approximately $12 billion in annual opportunity cost savings at the baseline 7.5% discount rate, with sensitivity analysis producing a range of $8–15 billion. The majority of gains accrue from moving to same-day or within-hour settlement. Second, tokenization and smart contract escrow substantially reduce real estate intermediation costs, blockchain-based digital identity streamlines wealth management onboarding, and a stablecoin taxonomy classifies fiat-collateralized, crypto-collateralized, and algorithmic designs by risk profile. Third, on-chain data reveal persistent governance token concentration (Gini > 0.98) and low voter participation (typically below 10%), exposing a gap between DAO theory and practice. Blockchain-specific risks are mapped to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, and mechanism design solutions, such as quadratic voting and AI-assisted proposal evaluation, are proposed to address whale dominance. Effective adoption requires hybrid architecture combining on-chain automation with off-chain structures for accountability and regulatory compliance. Full article

The present article examines the pioneering case of blockchain adoption in local government by the City of Lugano and discusses how Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) may support institutional innovation beyond pilot experimentation. The Swiss municipality of Lugano has developed an integrated strategy that combines permissioned blockchain infrastructure (SwissLedger), a municipal payment token (LVGA), digital literacy and payment innovation initiatives (Plan ₿), and the issuance of fully digital municipal bonds. By adopting a case study methodology, the analysis draws on quantitative indicators of platform usage, operational data, and a sentiment analysis of media coverage to document technological developments and socio-economic patterns correlated with the initiative. SwissLedger has been adopted as an infrastructural experiment for secure document notarization, public administration digital services, open-finance interoperability with optional compliance tools, and sector-specific applications. Furthermore, the Plan ₿ initiative emerges as a communication catalyst, generating international visibility and positive sentiment, alongside descriptive statistics consistent with local economic activity. Lugano’s digital bond issuances also attracted attention to the potential of how DLT could support settlement processes and transparency in public finance. Overall, the evidence gathered suggests that DLT adoption in local government is not merely a technological upgrade, but rather part of a broader organizational transformation process. The case findings also outline a set of potentially transferable elements for municipalities seeking to align innovation with public value creation. Full article

The rapid convergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) is reshaping the digital economy by enabling autonomous, trustless, and value-driven interactions among connected devices. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the emerging paradigm that combines IoT’s pervasive sensing and communication capabilities with DeFi’s programmable financial infrastructure. We first discuss the motivation behind this convergence and explore key opportunities, including autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) payments, decentralized data marketplaces, and trustless IoT service provisioning. Despite its potential, IoT–DeFi integration introduces significant security and privacy challenges related to smart contract vulnerabilities, consensus protocol risks, oracle manipulation, and constrained device capabilities. We review existing mitigation approaches such as lightweight cryptography, secure contract design, and decentralized identity management, and critically assess their limitations in heterogeneous, resource-limited environments. Building on this analysis, identify research gaps and propose future directions emphasizing formal verification of IoT-integrated smart contracts, robust oracle design, interoperability frameworks, and privacy-preserving trust models. This survey systematically maps opportunities, threats, and open issues. In doing so, it guides researchers and practitioners toward building secure, scalable, and energy-efficient IoT–DeFi ecosystems for next-generation decentralized applications. Full article

Cryptocurrencies are widely recognised for catalysing distributed ledger technologies and tokenisation, innovations that are transforming payment systems globally. However, their role as money is often contested and the subject of intense academic and policy debate. Nevertheless, new taxonomies of money allocate a unique place for cryptocurrencies. Described based upon a few high-level features, cryptocurrencies, except for stablecoins, are assumed to be a uniform group that can indeed be studied and categorised as such. Moreover, the logic of their creation is often looked at from a broad decentralisation and disintermediation perspective and remains ambiguous and questionable at best. This paper reports the findings of a clinical investigation into the top 30 cryptocurrencies representing 95.5% of the total crypto market capitalisation. This study is primarily concerned with their logic of creation, and how they compare with that of fiat money and central bank digital currencies. The findings reveal that, unlike fiat money, and CBDCs, crypto mechanics depict a diverse assortment of logics. The evidence suggests that despite widespread technical innovations, the crypto ambition to provide an alternative to centrally controlled debt-based fiat money has managed to add a combination of transaction validation, mathematical guesswork, pseudo-randomness, and size dependent probability as alternative logics of creation and allocation. While centrally managed bank-controlled debt-based fiat money leaves a lot to be desired, protocol-managed, code-controlled, size-dependent probabilistic money does not seem like much of an upgrade. This paper addresses the limits of tokenisation as a transformational tool and argues that cryptocurrencies may have helped trigger improvements in the technology of money, but not in its logic of creation. Indeed, to compete in the emerging monetary landscape it has helped create, i.e., the ubiquitous tokenisation of debt and debt-based fiat money, the crypto revolution will have to extend its value proposition beyond technology and pseudo-randomness. Full article

Amidst the escalating geopolitical fragmentation of the global financial system, divergent stablecoin architectures are emerging. This study employs Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and introduces a formalized ‘Geopolitical Stablecoin’ (GPSC) model to conduct a systematic comparison of three representative cases: A quasi-sovereign asset within a coordinated closed-loop system, a commercial asset with global open-market circulation, and a state-issued asset representing a failed local initiative. Our analysis reveals that in the model implemented as a quasi-sovereign asset, parameters traditionally viewed as vulnerabilities—such as reserve opacity and a high degree of centralization—are functionally reinterpreted as elements ensuring its operational resilience. In contrast, the risks associated with the commercial asset model are emergent properties of its scale and decentralized distribution. The findings highlight the necessity for a differentiated regulatory approach aimed at targeted intervention in key architectural components of the model rather than the use of universal bans. Full article

Public authorities have increasingly focused on digital financial inclusion (DFI) owing to its potential to enhance overall financial inclusion (FI) and, ultimately, to mitigate households’ financial vulnerability (FV). Although the existing literature generally reports a negative relationship between DFI and FV, most studies focus on economically less developed countries and apply heterogeneous measurement approaches. This study adopts a quantitative methodology to assess DFI as a potential determinant of FV in a developed economy—Spain—using both objective and subjective indicators of FV. DFI is proxied by the diversity of payment and transfer methods conducted via Internet and mobile devices. Empirical findings confirm a negative association between DFI and FV, indicating that higher levels of digital engagement are associated with lower FV. However, results also reveal a potential adverse effect on savings behaviour, possibly linked to the reduced “pain of paying” commonly associated with online transactions. These insights suggest that policies promoting DFI should be complemented by initiatives to enhance financial literacy, strengthen consumer protection laws, and reintroduce the “feel of cashback” within online payment platforms. By providing evidence from a developed country, this paper contributes to the limited literature by also examining subjective measures of FV variables and offline FI. Full article

Sextortion has rapidly expanded into a global cyber-enabled crime that leverages anonymous digital communication and decentralized payment systems. This study examines the financial infrastructures underlying contemporary sextortion by conducting a two-phase analysis of 87 confirmed cases involving cryptocurrency payments. Using blockchain forensic tools and open-source intelligence, the research traces fund movements across perpetrator-controlled wallets, identifies laundering techniques such as mixers, peel-chain transfers, and exchange-based cash-outs, and links these behaviors to narrative patterns within victim reports. The results reveal a dual-tier ecosystem in which mass-produced, multilingual extortion scripts coexist with divergent laundering typologies that differentiate lower-value, high-volume scams from more organized and higher-yield operations. By integrating qualitative and quantitative evidence, this study provides a forensic framework for detecting illicit cryptocurrency activity, improving threat classification, and strengthening investigative and regulatory responses to sextortion and related crypto-enabled interpersonal crimes. Full article

Blockchain technology has increasingly drawn the attention of governments seeking to modernize public services through transparent, secure, and efficient digital infrastructures. Drawing on case studies from diverse regions, including the UAE, Estonia, Georgia, Colombia, and multiple Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations, this systematic review synthesizes implementation patterns across domains such as land administration, digital identity, procurement, and intergovernmental payments. The critical analysis highlights blockchain’s capacity to establish tamper-evident records, automate verification, and reduce administrative overhead while also addressing technical and institutional factors that shape its impact. Outcomes across successful deployments suggest that benefits are most pronounced when blockchain aligns with real governance needs and is supported by robust legal and digital infrastructure. This review also identifies key barriers to adoption, including interoperability challenges, regulatory uncertainty, limited technical capacity, and resistance to organizational change. Notably, this review highlights a critical but underexplored dimension involving the need for public accountability not only in service delivery but also in the governance of blockchain systems themselves. By examining real-world use cases alongside technical and policy frameworks, this review advances a deeper understanding of blockchain’s role in reshaping public administration and sets a research agenda for building more trusted, auditable, and inclusive digital government systems. Full article

Agentic AI is increasingly framed as enabling consumers to delegate commerce decisions and actions to digital assistants, yet consumer-facing evidence still centers on assistive chatbots and recommender-like systems, with scarce evaluation of execution-level delegation. This study provides an evidence-mapping review of empirical work on agentic commerce and synthesizes determinants and outcomes of delegation across three questions: (RQ1) how systems are operationalized (autonomy, task scope, interaction mode, and transaction capability/evidence realism), (RQ2) what facilitates or inhibits delegation, and (RQ3) what downstream outcomes follow for marketing performance and consumer experience. We searched Scopus and Web of Science for English-language, peer-reviewed primary studies (2015–2026) and applied conservative coding rules that distinguish claimed capability from simulated or demonstrated execution. The mapped literature is concentrated in text-based, low-autonomy assistants focused on recommendation and post-purchase support; coverage drops sharply for workflow-level autonomy, cart building, checkout/payment execution, and negotiation. Across studies, findings cluster into two motifs: a utility/assurance pathway in which performance cues and interaction quality increase perceived usefulness, satisfaction, and trust, and a governance pathway in which autonomy cues and system-initiated control trigger reactance/powerlessness and reduce acceptance unless mitigated by safeguards; urgency can attenuate governance resistance. Because most outcomes are intention- or vignette-based, calibration, verification, and error-recovery behaviors remain under-measured. Overall, delegation appears to depend less on maximizing autonomy than on coupling capability with user governance (consent, oversight, recourse, accountability), and we outline measurement priorities for evaluating execution-capable agents. Full article

As cross-border e-commerce expands in emerging economies, consumer participation increasingly depends on perceived transaction risk linked to digital payments, settlement, dispute resolution, and institutional enforceability. This study reconceptualizes online purchase intention (OPI) as a decision embedded in retail international finance. Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), it integrates Internet Trustworthiness Behavior (ITB) and Country of Origin (COO) as risk-relevant signals shaping consumer judgment under cross-border uncertainty. Survey data from 390 digitally active consumers in the Dominican Republic were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that ITB strengthens perceived behavioral control, attitudes toward online purchasing, and subjective norms, while also exerting a direct positive effect on OPI. COO emerges as a strong direct predictor of OPI, functioning as a heuristic indicator of country credibility when formal safeguards appear weak. Contrary to standard TPB expectations, perceived behavioral control negatively predicts OPI, suggesting that greater digital competence may heighten awareness of expected losses and limited recourse in high-risk environments. The findings advance international business and finance research by showing how micro-level trust practices and macro-level country signals jointly shape consumer risk management in cross-border digital markets, with implications for inclusive participation and consumer protection. Full article