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The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary International Political Economy pp 317–329Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

‘Fintech’ and Financial Inclusion

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Abstract

This chapter examines the intersection of key recent debates about financial markets in the Global South: the implications of technological change and efforts to promote financial inclusion. It highlights a recent ‘turn to technology’, in which advocates of financial inclusion faced with uneven and limited progress of access to finance pin hopes on new financial technologies (‘fintech’) to remove barriers to access. The chapter situates this development in a longer and contradictory pattern of neoliberal development governance. It concludes by reflecting on the limits of fintech as tools for poverty reduction in light of this discussion.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Bernards (2018) for a more detailed critical treatment of the politics of the ‘informal’.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Nick Bernards

Authors
  1. Nick Bernards
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Timothy M. Shaw

  2. Bavarian School of Public Policy, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Laura C. Mahrenbach

  3. Centre for African Studies, University of Mumbai, Mumbai, India

    Renu Modi

  4. School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia

    Xu Yi-chong

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Cite this chapter

Bernards, N. (2019). ‘Fintech’ and Financial Inclusion. In: Shaw, T.M., Mahrenbach, L.C., Modi, R., Yi-chong, X. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary International Political Economy. Palgrave Handbooks in IPE. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45443-0_20

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