IIMS Journal of Management Science

Impact of Fintech Adoption on Select Macroeconomic Variables in India: An ARDL Approach

Poonam Sethi¹ and Rinku Manocha¹

First Published 1 May 2023. https://doi.org/10.1177/0976030X221139662

Article Information

Volume 14, Issue 2 July 2023

Corresponding Author:

Rinku Manocha, Department of Commerce, Hindu College, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007, India
Email: rmanocha2002@yahoo.com

¹ Department of Commerce, Hindu College, University of Delhi, India

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-Commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed

Abstract

Fintech adoption (technology-enabled finance) has not only supplemented the existing physical financial setups for India but has also stretched its wings towards providing the financial services to those who had limited or no access to physical banking (and other financial institutions). Moreover, COVID-19-based restrictions have further strengthened the Fintech adoption among suppliers, regulators and consumers of financial services which in turn has benefited the economy at large. The present study is an attempt to empirically evaluate the impact of Fintech adoption on India’s select macro-economic variables. The macro-economic variables, namely economic growth; income per individual; official exchange rate as a proxy of financial stability vis-à-vis world at large; and labour participation were examined. An index was formed via principal component analysis to capture Fintech adoption over the period 2001–2020 and ARDL framework was employed to examine the results. The results indicate that Fintech adoption has supported India’s economic growth, income per capita and also official exchange rate. Intense regulatory measures towards technical-efficient financial structures might have contributed towards such results. However, the results indicate that the growth in digital financial medium is leading to a reduction in jobs in India.

Keywords

Fintech, economic growth, exchange rate, labour participation

References

Adeoye, B. W., & Alenoghena, R. O. (2019, December). Internet usage, financial inclusion and economic growth in Nigeria. Ovidius University Annals, Economic Sciences Series, (2), 2–12.

Ali, A. (2019). Effects of financial inclusion on economic growth and economic development in six Asian countries. Bulletin of Business and Economics (BBE), 8(1), 16–33.

Appiah-Otoo, I., & Song, N. (2021). The impact of Fintech on poverty reduction: Evidence from China. Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13095225

Arner, D. W., & Barberis, J. (2015). Regulating Fintech innovation: A balancing act, Asian Institute of International Financial Law. http://www.law.hku.hk/aiifl/regulating-fintech-innovationa-balancing-act–1-april-1230-130-pm/

Bakari, S. (2019). Innovation and economic growth: Does internet matter [MPRA Paper 94851]. University Library of Munich.

Bakari, S., & Tiba, S. (2020). The Impact of internet on economic growth in North Africa: New empirical and policy analysis [MPRA Paper 100609]. University Library of Munich.

Buckley, R., Arner, D., & Barberis, J. (2016). The evolution of Fintech: A new post-crisis paradigm Georgetown Journal of International Law, 47, 1271–1319. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2676553

Campos, N. F., & Kinoshita, Y. (2010). Structural reforms, financial liberalization, and foreign direct investment. IMF Staff Papers, 57(2), 326–365. https://doi.org/10.1057/imfsp.2009.17

Chetty, P. (2018). Auto regressive distributed lag model (ARDL) and its advantages. https://www.projectguru.in/auto-regressive-distributed-lag-model-ardl/

Chinoda, T., & Mashamba, T. (2021). Fintech, financial inclusion and income inequality nexus in Africa. Cogent Economics & Finance, 9. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039. 2021.1986926

Darma, N. A. D., & Ali, M. (2016). An assessment of the effect of telecommunication investment on economic growth in West Africa. Journal of Empirical Economics, 5(3), 153–162.

Das, S. (2020). Banking landscape in the 21st century. https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_SpeechesView.aspxId=1094

Dudhe, C. (2021). Impact of financial inclusion o n the growth o f Indian economy. Network Intelligence Studies, Romanian Foundation for Business Intelligence.

Ehrentraud, J., Ocampo, D., Garzoni, L., & Piccolo, M. (2020, January). Policy responses to FinTech: A cross country overview. BIS.

Frost, J. (2020). The economic forces driving FinTech adoption across countries [DNB Working Papers 663]. Netherlands Central Bank.

Fu, J., & Mishra, M. M. (2020). The global impact of COVID–19 on Fintech adoption [Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 20–38]. Swiss Finance Institute. https://ideas.repec.org/p/chf/rpseri/rp2038.html

Ghatak, S., & Siddiki, J. U. (2001). The use of the ARDL approach in estimating virtual exchange rates in India. Journal of Applied Statistics. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 02664760120047906.

Ghosh, S. (2016). Does mobile telephony spur growth Evidence from Indian states. Telecommunication Policy, 40(10), 1020–1031. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2016.05.009

Hornuf, L., & Haddad, C. (2016). The emergence of the global Fintech market: Economic and technological determinants. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2830124

Hossine Sharif, S. (2016). The role of telecommunication over the economic development of Bangladesh [MPRA Paper 98957]. University Library of Munich. https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/98957.html

Imam, T., McInnes, A., Sisira, C., & Grose, R. (2022, February). Opportunities and barriers for FinTech in SAARC and ASEAN countries. JRFM, MDPI, 15(2), 1–37. https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jjrfmx/v15y2022i2p77-d748296.html

Jin, L., & Jin, J. C. (2014). Internet education and economic growth: Evidence from cross-country regressions. Economies, 2(1), 78–94. ScholarBank@NUS Repository. https://doi.org/10.3390/economies2010078

Kammoun, S., Loukil, S., & Loukil, Y. (2020). The impact of FinTech on economic performance and financial stability in MENA Zone. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-0039-2.ch013

Katz, R., & Emara, N. (2022).The economic impact of telecommunications in Egypt [MPRA Paper 112467]. University Library of Munich.

Kurul, Z. (2017). Nonlinear relationship between institutional factors and FDI flows: Dynamic panel threshold analysis. International Review of Economics and Finance, 48, 148–60.

Lal, R., & Saluja, R. (2012). E-banking: The Indian scenario. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Management Review, 1(4). www.indianresearchjournals.com

Lawrence, J., & Jang, C. J. (2014, March). Internet education and economic growth: Evidence from cross-country regressions. Economies, MDPI, 2(1), 1–17.

Liew, V. (2004). Which lag selection criteria should we employ Economics Bulletin, 3, 1–9.

Maune, A., Matanda, E., & Mundonde, J. (2020). Does financial inclusion cause economic growth in Zimbabwe An empirical investigation. Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth, AUDŒ, 16, 195–215.

Muhammad, M., & Abdullahi, K. (2020). Impact of external debt servicing on economic growth in Nigeria: an ARDL approach. International Journal of Business and Technopreneurship, 10(2), 257–267.

Murthy, K. V. B., & Bhasin, N. (2015). The impact of bilateral tax treaties: A multi-country analysis of FDI inflows into India. Journal of International Trade & Economic Development. 24, 10. https://doi.org/1080/09638199.2014.960442

Najwa, P. F., & Daud, M. B. (2018). Impact of Fintech on the economic growth: Evidence from selected countries. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Impact-of-Fintech-on-the-economic-growth%3A-evidence-Najwa-Daud/ae43bc0ce9cc4483de72c 522e9de02e804ff89b7

Narayan, S. W. (2019). Does Fintech matter for Indonesia economic growth Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking, 22(4), 437–456.

Narayan, S., & Sahminan (2018, October). Has Fintech influenced Indonesia’s exchange rate and inflation Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking, 21(2), 1–14.

Okoli, T. (2020). Is the relationship between financial technology and credit risk monotonic Evidence from the BRICS economies. Asian Economic and Financial Review, 10, 999–1011. 10.18488/journal.aefr.2020.109.999.1011.

Oladipo Olalekan, D. (2019). Nexus between telecommunication infrastructures, economic growth and development in Africa: Panel vector autoregression (P-VAR) analysis. Telecommunications Policy, 43(8), 1.

Othman, N., Othman, N., & Juhdi, N. (2019). Determining the validity and reliability of entrepreneurial emotion. Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal, 25, 1–5.

Othman, N., Zaghlol, A. K., & Ramdhan, N. A. (2021). The nexus between FinTech adoption and financial development in Malaysia: An overview. Global Business and Management Research: An International Journal, 13, 365–375.

Pesaran M. H., Shin Y., & Smith R. J. (2001) Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 16(1), 289–326.

Rahman, M. M., & Kashem, M. A. (2017). Carbon emissions, energy consumption and industrial growth in Bangladesh: empirical evidence from ARDL cointegration and Granger causality analysis. Energy Policy, 110, 600–608.

Rangkakulnuwat, P., & Dunyo, S. K. (2018, December). The impact of internet on economic growth in Africa. Applied Economics Journal, 25(2), 19–33.

Samargandi, N., Fidrmuc, J., & Ghosh, S. (2015). Is the relationship between financial development and economic growth monotonic Evidence from a sample of middle-income countries. World Development, 68, 66–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.11.010

Saroy, R., Gupta, R., & Dhal, S. (2020). Fintech: The force of creative disruption. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345759113_Fintech_the_Force_of_Creative_Disruption/citations

Shaikh, Z., Wadi, R. A., & AlMahari, E. (2022). The impact of Fintech phenomenon on economic development: The case of Bahrain. In A. M. A. Musleh Al-Sartawi (Eds), Artificial intelligence for sustainable finance and sustainable technology [ICGER 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, Vol. 423]. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93464-4_14

Shofawati, A. (2019). The role of digital finance to strengthen financial inclusion and the growth of SME in Indonesia [Paper presentation]. The 2nd International Conference on Islamic Economics, Business, and Philanthropy (ICIEBP) Theme: ‘Sustainability and Socio Economic Growth’ KnE Social Sciences, pp. 389–407. https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v3i13.4218

Shukla, U. N., & Dubey, A. (2022). Expectations of FinTech start-ups and regulatory sandbox in India: an empirical study. International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 27(2), 242–262.

Singh, R., Malik, G., & Jain, V. (2021). FinTech effect: Measuring impact of FinTech adoption on banks’ profitability. International Journal of Management Practice, 14(4), 411–427.

Thomas, J. T., & Tiwari, D. (2021). Driving innovations, leveraging technology in Indian business ecosystem [Working Papers 451]. Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode.

Tochukwu, T. O. (2020). Is the relationship between financial technology and credit risk monotonic Evidence from the BRICS economies. Asian Economic and Financial Review, 10(9), 999–1011.

Wokabi, V. W., & Fatoki, O. I. (2019, May). Determinants of financial inclusion in East Africa. International Journal of Business and Management, 7(1), 125–143.

Zahra, K., Azim, P., & Mahmood, A. M. (2008). Telecommunication infrastructure development and economic growth: A panel data approach. The Pakistan Development Review, 47(4), 711–726.