The Role of Fintech in Promoting Financial Inclusion to Achieve Sustainable Development: An Integrated Bibliometric Analysis and Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Fintech’s ability to enhance efficiency and reduce costs in financial services can promote greater financial inclusion (FI), which in turn serves as a foundation for sustainable and equitable development. Due to the dearth of thorough summaries in the body of existing literature, this systematic review and bibliometric analysis aim to present quantitative and qualitative information about the comprehensive relationship between fintech, FI, and sustainability development in an organised way. The review includes 189 publications from peer-reviewed journals of Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases up to 2023. The article was compiled based on the Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Reviews (SPAR‐4‐SLR) protocol and the theory-context-characteristics-methodology (TCCM) framework. Bibliometric analysis has identified the leading journals, authors, nations, articles, and themes. A conceptual model has been designed to illustrate the entire scope, following which potential study areas have been proposed. This study aims to provide academic researchers, policymakers, and regulators with a detailed understanding of the relationship between fintech, financial inclusion, and sustainable development. The analysis demonstrates that FI is an essential requirement of our society and a vital pathway to achieve sustainable development. In the content analysis, we identify an integrative framework of four variables on this nexus. We found a very few conceptual, qualitative, and mixed method papers on this interaction, which provide potential avenues for further research. We recommend that scholars consider adopting a multi-theory perspective. We propose a comprehensive framework on this nexus. It will also pinpoint specific areas that require further investigation.