Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
According to World Bank (2018), financial inclusion means that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance – delivered responsibly and sustainably. The definition of financial inclusion is quite broad and it requires the measurement of various indicators. Any financial data framework has a micro and macro perspective. The micro perspective takes into consideration the information that is granular enough and the macro perspective deals with the economic and policy implications of financial inclusion (Gadanecz & Tissot, 2016). The governments and other policy institutes in each nation are framing their initiatives for enabling the access and choosing/usage aspects of financial inclusion. Sha'ban et al. (2020) observed that to enhance financial inclusion, several country-level characteristics and economic factors needs to be improved. The study further identified the need for improving banking system conditions and digital technology for attaining the goals of financial inclusion. The indices developed by various researchers highlights the concept of financial inclusion from different dimensions. Demand, supply, and infrastructure were the three dimensions considered by the researchers (Ambarkhane et al., 2016) while developing the index for India. Reserve Bank of India (2021) had developed the financial inclusion index by including the dimensions of access, usage and quality. As evidenced by RBI (Das, 2021), the dimensions of access and usage take into consideration the digital indicators as its sub-dimensions. The present study will be focusing on the concept of digital financial inclusion considering its significance at the national and international level.
In the Asian scenario, it is quite significant to conduct a study to understand the status of financial inclusion. While some countries are leading in terms of attaining financial inclusion and its advanced characteristics, some other countries in this region are still able to provide access only to basic financial services (Loukoianova et al., 2018). Demographic characteristics, high institutional quality and good governance significantly impact the level of financial inclusion in Asian countries (Park & Mercado, 2015). In this context, it is essential to study the role of ICT in enhancing access to financial products/services and compare the position of India with the other Asian countries.
The adoption and usage of ICT in financial services depends upon the users' internal and external environment which is closely connected with their social, cultural, economic and personal factors. The variations in these factors can act as an opportunity as well as a barrier for the involvement of ICT in financial inclusion. In the present scenario, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe and its effects on the functioning of many sectors including banking and finance can also be examined from this framework. In the Indian context, COVID-19 impacted the normal way in which the economy was functioning and this demanded alternative mechanisms to overcome the challenges created by this pandemic. It is worth discussing the access to financial products/services during the outbreak of COVID-19 since the severity of the pandemic and the uncertainty of its duration has impacted the financial sector at the global level. The first COVID-19 case was reported in India during January 2020 and from then enough efforts have been taken by the central as well as the state governments to prevent this disease. In March 2020, WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic (WHO, 2020) and subsequently, the lockdown was imposed across the nation. The restrictions imposed by the Government of India, impact on the free mobility, social distancing norms, fear among the people etc. have their reflections on the Indian citizen's financial access. Hence, this paper also looks at how financial access using ICT based platforms (digital financial inclusion) have been impacted due to the COVID 19 pandemic in India. Further, the present study intends to analyse the selected payment indicators to see the changes in the usage trend before and after the declaration of the pandemic which can be a guiding factor for the financial social workers to plan their activities accordingly.