What is the project about?

Financial inclusion is a critical aspect of economic development and poverty alleviation. Access to formal financial services, including banking and payment systems, enables all individuals to participate in the modern economy. In recent years, adopting cashless payments has however gained significant momentum by providing convenient, secure, and cost-effective alternatives to cash transactions.

Meanwhile, there are more and more reports on people who can not use cashless payments due to legal status (e.g., immigrants), digital literacy (e.g., homeless), cognitive or physical limitations (e.g., dementia or blindness), or age. Usually, financial inclusion is mainly an issue in developing countries due to a lack of bank accounts or identification. However, a high level of digitalization leads to new and even unforeseen issues for some groups in society.

This project focuses on payments, which are becoming increasingly digitalized and complex. It is not only money and payments that are becoming digitalized but also the payment context. For instance, online shopping requires digital payments and verification, such as MitID, making payments increasingly tricky. In addition, the EU Accessibility Act puts new requirements on all digital services, including financial services. However, there is "one silver bullet" in the public debate: more cash acceptance by merchants and banks. More cash might be the solution, but we need to find out.

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Project activities‍

This project explores issues related to cashless payment from the perspective of both payers and payment service providers and asks how the financially excluded will pay in the future. The project seeks to understand the problems and potential solutions to cashless payments for the financially excluded.

The results will hopefully create valuable inputs to the public debate and trigger innovation in payments and the design of financial services by considering excluded groups.

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Host Institution(s):​

Copenhagen Business School

Principal Investigator:​

Jonas Hedman, Professor at The Department for Digitalization

Partners:​

Finans Denmark

SprintEins Aps

Sammenslutningen af Unge Med Handicap (SUMH)

Grant:​

360.000 DKR

Project Period

19.3.24-31.12.24