Financial Citizenship Beyond Borders: Validation of a Model between Brazil and France

Purpose Financial technologies or FinTech have replaced traditional financial services. Large investments have been made in FinTechs but there is a gap between service providers and consumers. Due to the high diversity and speed of changes, people still do not understand the new financial system and resist it. The success of the transition requires providing an opportunity for citizens' participation which is expressed with the term, financial citizenship. This study aims to focus on the citizenship dimension of FinTech transition and wants to analyze the influence of citizens in transition with a focus on financial technologies. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzed financial citizenship in FinTech transition by using a qualitative research method and grounded theory. The data were collected through open interviews with 26 FinTech players in Iran. Then the three-step process of open, axial and selective coding was performed and the main categories and relationships between them were identified. Findings Surveys have shown that educating and informing citizens provides the conditions for engagement and the formation of financial citizenship. Depending on citizens' level of awareness, they can play a role in the FinTech transition as customers, feedback providers or demanders. Of course, the disruption level of financial technological innovation affects the level of citizens' engagement. Finally, the conceptual model of financial citizenship provided and the effect of citizen participation on the FinTech transition has been analyzed. Originality/value This study is based on the belief that it is the citizens’ right to have a role in matters that directly affect their well-being. This role is not only the role of the customer and the user but goes beyond and becomes a role where citizens as players would be able to influence the technological transition like other interested players (policymakers and service providers). This research integrates the transition literature and financial citizenship; and analyzes the FinTech transition according to the position of citizens against FinTech developments.

Financial exclusion refers to those processes that prevent poor and disadvantaged social groups from gaining access to the financial system. It has important implications for uneven development because it amplifies geographical differences in levels of income and economic development. In recent years the financial-services industry in the United States and in Britain has become increasingly exclusionary in response to a financial crisis founded in higher levels of competition and extreme levels of indebtedness. The processes of financial exclusion are documented. An alternative agenda to foster resistance and help construct institutional alternatives of benefit to low-income communities currently being excluded by the financial system is formulated. Resistance to financial exclusion and the building of an alternative financial infrastructure will be significantly enhanced if the processes of exclusion are considered in the context of a notion of 'financial citizenship'.

Financial citizenship is crucial in our modern world. Financial citizenship is underpinned by the education of future generations so that they can understand both their local and global economies to make the best financial decisions concerning their lives. This paper discusses financial literacy, how it relates to individual citizens, and how it correlates with social, political and business spheres. According to current financial capability models, every individual’s financial well-being can be boosted by developing their financial knowledge and competency, which will improve their motivations and confidence. Societal constructs significantly create financial socialization, which increases our accessibility and engagements with institutions, businesses, political systems and society as a whole. Being educated about the details required for financial literacy is every human being’s right. Citizens have been characterized as being personally responsible, participatory or justice oriented; each person’s specific perspective can impact their financial lives, which supports the importance of the current concept of financial citizenship. Boosting global education about economic citizenship will help to reduce poverty, create more sustainable economic environments, and improve social outcomes and the life satisfaction of the world population. These concepts will be explored and discussed in this paper.

This chapter proposes a new framework to confront the legitimacy crisis between central banks and the public by advancing financial citizenship and a revised legitimacy narrative. It argues that central banks must move beyond investor education to foster inclusive, two-way dialogues that engage citizens in financial governance and recognize the normative choices embedded in monetary policy. The chapter presents financial citizenship as a shared responsibility that demands public commitment, mutual trust, and a nuanced understanding of central banks as both state and market institutions. It outlines a legitimacy narrative grounded in resilience, interdependence, collaboration, hard choices, and cultural awareness, emphasizing that legitimacy arises not only from expertise but also from reciprocal engagement. Finally, the chapter calls for structured processes to co-create legitimacy, urging central banks and the public to build trust-based, culturally informed partnerships that reflect diverse political and economic realities.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to propose and validate a Financial Citizenship Perception Scale from the perspective of the citizen.Design/methodology/approachAn instrument was applied in Brazil, whose dimensions and items were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis techniques and hierarchical cluster analysis.FindingsThe scale proposed in the study allows for the development of an indicator that defines whether an individual has a high or low level of financial citizenship, being represented by the dimensions of financial inclusion, financial protection and financial literacy.Practical implicationsThe methodology for standardizing the application of the Financial Citizenship Perception Scale is presented to allow researchers, managers and public policy makers to use the indicator to assess citizens' perception of financial citizenship.Originality/valueFinancial citizenship is a recurring theme in the formulation of recommendations, standards and instructions by international organizations and central banks in different countries. However, the literature on the topic still focuses on proposing indicators of financial citizenship obtained from secondary data.

Financial Citizenship addresses the new era of central banking by focusing on the conflicts over central banking legitimacy in order to ultimately provide “a new theory and practice of legitimacy” for central bankers. In this article, I summarize first how Riles accounts for the “culture clash” between central bankers and the public, and how she aims to solve these tensions with the concept of financial citizenship. Second, I argue that the book has missed one of the main problematic dimension of contemporary central banking, which is the rise of private financial power. I also contend that the analysis of the “populist backlash” lacks empirical underpinning and that the concept of “financial citizenship” is unlikely to restore central banks’ legitimacy.

I apply a financial citizenship lens to the Pakistani banking sector to consider how inclusive finance resolves the issue of uneven financial access. For this, I draw attention to how inclusive finance is a form of shadow banking. The case of Pakistan shows that policies of inclusive finance create a heterogeneous formal financial space. Institutionalized forms of inclusive finance result in a banking system that offers uneven access to finance because it contains separate parts for different clients. Such a system is defined by mainstream commercial banks based on a traditional bank intermediation model on the one hand, and inclusive finance based on a disintermediated, or shadow banking model, on the other. My study uses the example of two deposit-taking microfinance banks to show how contemporary financial systems in the Global South tend to contain an “outside” as well as an “inside”. As such, I draw attention to how shadow banks shape inclusive finance and limit financial citizenship, causing uneven access to finance, characterized by inequities in (1) rates, (2) requirements, and (3) surveillance. These inequities complicate and limit financial citizenship in spaces where shadow banking subsumes inclusive finance.

The functionalist coupling of financial literacy education (FLE) and financial citizenship has encouraged a form of financial action that emphasizes values of individualism, meritocracy, and rationality. In this chapter, I argue that such a characterization of the market is fundamentally reductive and circumscribes a critical feature of economic sense-making, namely, our sociability. I argue for a critical reframing of FLE’s functionalist paradigm, one that favors sociocultural forms of money meaning as highlighted by Vivianna Zelizer’s concept of relational work. I argue that functionalist approaches to FLE, and to financial citizenship, overlook the richness of our humanity and our interconnectedness. Likewise, it renders invisible the diversity of money practice and the meaning behind those practices. I conclude by offering a new, more democratic vision for financial citizenship; one that accounts for a greater breadth of understanding over financial motivation while simultaneously laying bare existing systems of oppression that undermine social cohesion and trust.

In 2018, the anthropological literature on economics was enriched by the publication of a book that argues for building communication bridges between financial experts and the public. It identifies the main blind spots on both sides, discusses the need to substantiate a new narrative legitimacy for central banks, and gives experts in these prominent institutions a rigorous call to action for a more effective communication. Annelis Riles’s Financial Citizenship is the outcome of more than 20 years of research on central banking culture and the social ties between financial regulators and the other financial market participants. The book complements analysis with thorough fieldwork, and one of its strengths is access to sources in the relevant institutions.

Financial inclusion tends to be presented as the remedy to financial exclusion. However, this relationship, in which financial inclusion and exclusion are opposites and mutually exclusive, is dubious given the notion of a financial citizenship which confers a right and ability on individuals and households to participate fully in the economy and to accumulate wealth. Despite the growing recognition that financial inclusion is not the same as financial citizenship, the former continues to be presented as a development intervention in the form of tools such as microloans and mobile money. These products reflect a bifurcated financial sector. The connection between these two notions may be highlighted through the concept of shadow financial citizenship. Since strategies that financialize development also bifurcate finance, they execute an inferior form of inclusion and of access to finance. The phenomena of shadow financial citizenship is thus a feature of finance where the needs of the poor are seen to be distinct, and where there is a separation between formal and informal markets.

This article presents a postcolonial analysis of financial citizenship (FC) programmes in Malaysia. Drawing on secondary data and on interviews with elites and citizen investors, the paper explores the spatial and historically specific nature of financialisation in a postcolonial context. Specifically, the paper draws out the significance of FC as part of broader nation building objectives in Malaysia from an elite perspective, while also observing the reluctance of citizen investors who are engaging with the equity market to support the formal objectives of the policy. In doing so, it provides an example of the financialisation of everyday life in a distinctive and complex emerging economy context. Moreover, the paper explores these processes from both elite and citizen perspectives, allowing these layered relations within FC to be analysed. The article, therefore, contributes to the financialisation literature by bringing new understandings of elite–citizen relations in postcolonial nation-building strategies.

One way the previous UK government tried to tackle declining youth financial capability was through its Child Trust Fund (CTF) policy. However, there were allegations that it created pliant subjects for financial markets and that it was paving the way to phase out services previously provided by the state. This article defends financial capability as part of financial citizenship and suggests that the CTF was important for supporting financial citizenship. The CTF model is being discussed in other countries and the arguments in this article are of importance in those countries, as well as to the carers and educators of the five million CTF holders in the UK.

“Neighbours First, Bankers Second”: Mobilising financial citizenship in Singapore

Policy stigmas are an importance aspect of financial governance. Their prescriptions serve both to regulate behaviour and to identify what counts as “good” financial governance. Conformity with stigmas is thus an important part of signaling “good” financial citizenship. This paper explores the source, significance, and shortcomings of one particular policy stigma, that which has been attached to capital controls. Focusing on the International Monetary Fund, it empirically examines how the degree of approval fixed to controls has varied considerably across time and space and within the IMF itself. It analyzes the origin and impact of this stigma as well as the potential costs and risks it raises.

Objective: This study aims to analyze how the perception of the financial system, financial knowledge, and socioeconomic and demographic variables impact the financial well-being of citizens. Fundamentals: Financial well-being is a state of being in which each person can fully meet their current and ongoing financial obligations, feeling secure regarding the financial future, and being able to make choices to enjoy life (CFPB,2015) Method: A survey was conducted with 1137 individuals living in twelve Brazilian cities. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's short scale and descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing, and multiple regression analysis were used as the main analysis techniques for the measurement of financial well-being. Results - The results indicated that, in addition to financial knowledge, the perception of inclusion, protection, and financial citizenship have a positive impact on the level of financial well-being. Thus, the implementation of policies that promote a better understanding of the financial system can contribute to raising the levels of financial well-being of citizens. Contributions: It innovates by assessing the impact of perception about various aspects of the financial system on financial well-being.