Fintech Ecosystem Across Developing Countries : Cross-Country Exploratory Comparison

Abstract

Fintech has emerged with transformative potential to impact financial growth and stability in any nation. While extant literature has steadily grown in scope and depth on fintech adoption factors and their impact on financial inclusion, a cross-country perspective is still largely missing. In this study, we conducted a qualitative research to examine the current situation of Fintech ecosystems in 18 developing nations selected based on World Bank GNI per capita categorization. We have compared these nations according to parameters taken from the literature which include population, median age, GNI per capita, literacy rate, mobile phone connections, number of internet users, unbanked population, investment in fintech, number of fintech companies, and regulation. A cornerstone measurement throughout our analysis was country ranking from Global Findexable Ranking 2021. The findings suggest that nations with high populations, median age, GNI per capita, literacy rate, mobile phone connections, internet usage, number of companies, investment, and low unbanked population enjoyed higher fintech ranking. Countries with highly regulated fintech industries like India, China, and Indonesia have been at the top of the ranking. A notable exception here is Vietnam, which has actually slipped down the rankings from the previous year. The paper provides a number of policy recommendations based on the exploratory findings for fintech ecosystems in developing nations in general and the ecosystem in Bangladesh in particular.