FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY AND FINANCIAL INCLUSION IN NIGERIA: AFULLY-MODIFIED ORDINARY LEAST SQUARE APPROACH

Abstract

This paper evaluates the effect of financial technology Fin-Tech on Nigeria’s financial
inclusion, with a focus on instant pay, web-based and mobile money transactions. The study
was conducted to have used Secondary Data, generated and analyzed using fully-modified
ordinary least square (FMOLS) methods to estimate the relations between financial
technology Fin-tech and Nigeria’s financial inclusion on a quarterly time-series data
spanning from 2012Q1 to 2025Q4. The findings revealed that instant pay transactions have
the significant and positive impact on financial inclusion in Nigeria with 4.5185, followed by
web-based transactions with 0.6606 and mobile money transactions with 2.4133 as their
respective estimated coefficients. In collection, these mentioned variables accounted for 73.
% of the variation in Nigeria’s financial inclusion (R-Squared = 0.73). The study concluded
that financial technology Fin-Tech are crucial in shaping financial inclusion not only in
Nigeria but all over the world. The study recommends that, the government, in collaboration
with private entities, should provide and at the time strengthen digital infrastructure and
mobile network connections to ensure reliable and convenient access to internet all over the
country. Again, the expansion of internet-based transactions that is arguably increasing
cyber-security threats calls for the enactment and application of cyber-security measures and
public awareness campaigns to safeguard the Nigeria’s digital financial infrastructures.