Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Financial Inclusion and Digital Adoption

Abstract

Digitalization is an inevitable fact due to increasing technology and the environment that challenges the status-quo of the traditional transactional systems. Especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, the adoption rate of eCommerce and digital transactions has increased significantly. In this research paper, we used eCommerce data of Hungary, Austria, Greece, and Sweden and their DESI index for 2017 to 2020 in order to understand the background of events which shows that the covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on people’s perception of the day-by-day transactions and that the economic development of a country has a profound impact on the financial inclusion metrics and digitalization appetite of their citizens. Our main findings show that curfews during the pandemic significantly influence the volume of eCommerce transactions and DESI Index rankings are substantially linked with real-life matters.