Drivers of Digital Financial Inclusion in Sri Lanka: Insights from the Global Findex Database - 2025

Abstract

Digital financial inclusion improves the lives of marginalized people, enhances economic growth, and reduces poverty by ensuring sustainable development. It is important to study the key drivers of digital financial inclusion, as financial inclusion and digital gaps exist in Sri Lanka's socio-economic context and can limit equal access to and use of digital financial services. Therefore, the study intends to identify the key determinants of access and usage of digital financial services in Sri Lanka. To attain this objective, the study collected secondary data employing the Global Findex Database 2025. Data analysis was performed using binary logistic re-gressions by compiling two dimensions of access and usage of digital financial inclusion, and eight models were derived representing different indicators of these two dimensions. Thus, results revealed that females are less likely to have access to certain digital financial services, while no significant relationship is observed between gender and the usage of digital financial services. Further-more, the findings indicate that age has a negative and statistically significant effect on both access to and usage of digital financial services. Moreover, higher educational attainment and participation in the economically active population (workforce) increase the likelihood of accessing and using digital financial services. However, the results also show that residing in the rural sector has a significant negative relationship only with access to a digitally enabled account and the use of digital merchant payments, whereas its relationship with accessing and using debit and credit cards, as well as making or receiving digital payments, is statistically insig-nificant. Accordingly, the present study has generated new empirical findings for the academic literature by providing key strategies to advance digital financial inclusion in Sri Lanka.