Financial Technology and Financial Access in Nigeria: Evidence from an Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model

Abstract

Financial technologies have made financial access easy for financial users therefore, this study examined the impact of financial technologies on creating financial access from 2009 to 2022. Data were collated on volume of automated teller machine, and volume of web transaction to measure the independent variable while usage dimension and availability if banking service were used to measure financial access. Research design adopted for the study was causal research design. The method of data analysis adopted for study to test the two models was Autoregressive Distributed Lag. The study arrived at the findings that ATM has negative and insignificant impact on usage dimension while WEB has positive but insignificant impact on usage dimension. Furthermore, the study found that ATM has a negative but significant impact on availability of banking service while WEB has positive insignificant impact on availability of banking service in the short-run. In the long-run ATM and WEB have significant impact on availability of banking service with ATM having negative impact in the long-run. the study also found a long-run cointegration. The study recommended that policy makers should pay attention to other factors such as income level and cultural habit that make people avoid financial innovation, and improving payment sites security.