Digital financial inclusion in Europe: the roles of digital infrastructure, socioeconomic structure and institutional quality

Purpose This study investigates how digital infrastructure, socioeconomic structure and institutional quality are associated with digital financial inclusion (DFI) across Europe. Design/methodology/approach Using World Bank Global Findex and World Development Indicators data for 24 European countries across the 2014, 2017 and 2021 survey waves, the study estimates fixed-effects panel regressions with country-clustered standard errors separately for developed and emerging and frontier economies. Random-effects comparisons are also conducted for the latter group. Robustness analyses examine the influence of Kazakhstan, population sub-grouping, economic classification and survey-wave effects, while wild-cluster-bootstrap tests assess sensitivity to the small number of country clusters. Findings Digital infrastructure, particularly Internet connectivity, exhibits the most recurring positive associations with DFI, especially for payment activity. These relationships are more consistent in developed economies, whereas the emerging and frontier results are broader but more sensitive to estimator choice, survey-wave controls and small-cluster inference. Population sub-grouping and economic classification reveal patterns concealed by aggregate and pooled estimates. Excluding Kazakhstan preserves the principal Internet-related payment findings and selected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita associations but weakens the automated teller machines and institutional evidence. Originality/value The study extends the DFI literature beyond composite country-level indices by examining payment and receipt behaviour separately across gender, age and income indicators. Its transaction- and population-specific lens identifies variations across population groups and stages of economic development that aggregate measures may conceal.