The next financial inclusion test: can digital finance improve financial health?

Financial inclusion is usually presented as a story of expanding access: more bank accounts, more mobile wallets and more digital payments. Thailand demonstrates how much progress those measures can capture. It also exposes what they miss.

By 2024, 92% of Thai adults held a financial account and 83% had made or received a digital payment. Yet only 54% saved formally, and nearly four in ten adults could not readily obtain emergency funds within 30 days. A population can be highly connected to financial services without being equally financially resilient.

These figures feature in CGAP's October 2026 case study, Beyond Access: Thailand and the Frontiers of Financial Inclusion. Its significance extends beyond Thailand. As digital finance matures across emerging markets, the central policy question changes: not simply whether people and businesses can enter the financial system, but whether participation improves their ability to manage risk, invest and withstand shocks.

The success of digital payments changes the problem

Thailand's PromptPay network is an impressive example of shared financial infrastructure. By December 2025, it had approximately 92 million registrations and was processing around 75 million transactions daily. Registrations should not be confused with unique individuals, but the transaction volume illustrates how deeply instant payments have become embedded in everyday commerce.

For small merchants, low-cost QR payments can remove the need for dedicated card terminals. For households, inexpensive transfers reduce friction in receiving income, paying bills and making routine purchases. Government adoption helped create early demand, while established banks provided distribution and trust.

This matters because financial infrastructure changes the economics of serving customers. A small-value transaction that is uneconomic through a branch can become practical through a common digital rail.

But cheaper transactions do not automatically produce better credit, savings or insurance. A merchant may accept digital payments every day and still lack affordable working capital. A household may transact frequently yet remain unable to cover an unexpected expense.

The distinction between access and financial health is therefore not semantic. It changes which outcomes governments and financial institutions should be accountable for.

The next barrier is making financial information useful

Payments generate records. Turning those records into useful financial services is a separate task.

Thailand has been developing this second layer through digital identity and customer-directed data sharing. Its National Digital ID system has more than 30 million registered users, helping participating institutions verify customers remotely. The Bank of Thailand's "Your Data" initiative seeks to allow individuals and businesses to share financial histories securely with other supervised providers.

The distinction between an established service and a planned one is important. As of the October 2026 CGAP study, broad standardised sharing of deposit data was still scheduled to begin toward the end of 2026, with other categories to follow in 2027–28. A narrower service allowing individuals to retrieve verified utility-payment records for loan applications had already launched in June 2025.

For an entrepreneur with irregular income or limited collateral, verified transaction and utility records could offer lenders a more informative picture than conventional documentation alone. But the benefit depends on consent, data quality, interoperability and lenders' willingness to use the information.

The strategic challenge is to make customers' financial histories portable without turning data collection into another barrier to participation.

More providers do not necessarily mean more competition

Digital finance has brought new interfaces, platforms and specialist lenders into the market. Thailand's experience suggests that counting entrants is an inadequate test of competition.

The CGAP study notes that nonbanks account for about 90% of e-money accounts but only around 45% of e-money spending value. Many new providers also remain dependent on incumbent banks for payment infrastructure, balance sheets, customer information or distribution.

This creates a distinction between the number of brands customers can see and the number of institutions capable of competing independently. If a new lender cannot access reliable data or essential infrastructure on reasonable terms, licensing additional providers may change the appearance of the market without substantially changing its economics.

For regulators, competition policy must therefore examine infrastructure access, data portability, switching costs and market conduct—not just licensing statistics.

For banks and fintechs, partnership can be commercially sensible. But policymakers should distinguish partnerships that expand customer choice from arrangements that reinforce dependence on a small number of gatekeepers.

Faster finance also makes financial harm faster

The convenience of digital credit has a less comfortable counterpart: borrowers can accumulate obligations quickly, while fraud can move through interconnected payment systems at speed.

Thailand's household debt stood at approximately 87% of GDP in the third quarter of 2025. This is a serious vulnerability, but it would be misleading to attribute it primarily to fintech: much of the debt accumulated before digital lending expanded. CGAP reports that the digital-lending loan book reached about US$17 billion in 2025, roughly 3% of household debt.

The relevant concern is not that digital credit created the underlying debt problem. It is that frictionless lending can intensify existing distress when affordability checks, disclosures and collection practices are inadequate.

Fraud creates another test. Thailand established a coordinated Anti-Online Scam Operation Center, which reported preventing an estimated US$540 million in losses during its first year. This is an estimate of losses prevented, not a measure of funds recovered or proof that fraud risk has been eliminated.

Thailand has also tightened responsible-lending requirements, including affordability assessments and restructuring obligations. By December 2025, the relevant framework had supported restructuring for approximately 4.3 million borrowers covering about US$80 billion in debt. Those are important measures of activity; they do not, by themselves, demonstrate lasting improvements in borrowers' financial well-being.

The lesson is that consumer protection must be assessed through outcomes: fewer harmful loans, effective recourse, manageable repayment burdens and the ability to recover after financial shocks.

A better scorecard for the next phase

For emerging-market authorities, lenders and development institutions, the implication is practical. Financial inclusion strategies need a second scorecard alongside conventional access indicators.

First, measure financial resilience: whether households can meet emergency expenses and whether enterprises can manage cash-flow interruptions without resorting to costly informal finance.

Second, measure product suitability: whether credit is affordable, savings products are used meaningfully and repayment schedules fit actual income patterns. Approval volumes alone cannot reveal this.

Third, measure effective competition: whether customers can transfer information, compare offers and switch providers, and whether new firms can reach essential infrastructure on fair terms.

Fourth, measure consumer outcomes: fraud losses, complaint resolution, debt distress, successful restructuring and exclusion arising from automated decisions or aggressive controls.

These measures are harder to collect than registrations or transaction counts. They also demand better coordination between regulators, providers and public institutions. But they are closer to the objectives that justify investment in financial inclusion in the first place.

Development finance institutions have a particular role. They can support interoperable infrastructure and responsible innovation, while requiring participating financial institutions to report not only outreach but also portfolio quality, customer outcomes and evidence that underserved segments are benefiting. Technical assistance should strengthen the systems needed to produce and act on that information.

The next frontier is institutional, not merely technological

Thailand offers an instructive experience, not a model to copy wholesale. Its mature banking system, established identity infrastructure and history of public financial programmes differ from conditions in many lower-income markets. CGAP's study is an analytical case study, not a causal evaluation proving that each reform produced a particular result. Several initiatives remain too recent for their long-term effects to be known.

That limitation strengthens rather than weakens the policy message. Technology can lower the cost of access, but institutions determine whether those gains translate into useful, competitive and responsible financial services.

Emerging markets should continue expanding access where exclusion remains widespread. At the same time, they should begin measuring what happens after customers join the system.

A payment made successfully is an operational achievement. A household better able to withstand a shock, or a small enterprise able to finance productive growth on sustainable terms, is a development outcome. Financial inclusion policy must learn to distinguish the two.

References

1. CGAP (2026). Beyond Access: Thailand and the Frontiers of Financial Inclusion. Case study, October 2026.

2. Klapper, L. et al. (2025). The Global Findex Database 2025: Connectivity and Financial Inclusion in the Digital Economy. Washington, DC: World Bank.

3. Bank of Thailand (2025). Press Release 42/2025: Regulation enabling consumers and businesses to share data held by financial service providers, 10 November 2025.

4. Bank of Thailand (2025). Joint press release: Service for issuing water and electricity records under Project "Your Data", 30 June 2025.

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