Crowdfunding platforms and financial inclusion: Fulfilled promise or disillusion?

Fozan Fareed and Jordana Viotto

Finance Research Letters, 2025, vol. 73, issue C

Abstract: Pro-social crowdfunding platforms offer a promising path for financial inclusion in developing countries. The literature on crowdfunding lacks evidence of whether and to what extent pro-social crowdfunding platforms fulfil this promise. Employing different techniques to tackle endogeneity, we show that, while crowdfunding platforms expand access to capital to more borrowers, the service to more vulnerable individuals does not improve. We also find that interest rates remain unchanged. Our results allow us to provide recommendations to policymakers regarding the connection between digital technologies like crowdfunding platforms and financial inclusion.

Keywords: Fintech; Crowdfunding; Kiva; Financial inclusion; Microenterprises; Microfinance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 L26 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612324016714
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finlet:v:73:y:2025:i:c:s1544612324016714

DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2024.106642

Access Statistics for this article

Finance Research Letters is currently edited by R. Gençay

More articles in Finance Research Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().