Impact of Covid-19 on Using of Fintech in Bangladesh: Evidence from Urban Consumer.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue II, February 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186

Impact of Covid-19 on Using of Fintech in Bangladesh: Evidence from Urban Consumer.

Ashiqun Nabi¹, Md Osama Adnan^2
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, Manarat International University
²Department of Business Administration, Manarat International University

Abstract
The article tries to understand the impact of Covid-19 on using of fintech in Bangladesh by studying the consumer behaviour of urban people. Generally, people are not enough habituated with fintech. But during the time of the covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, they were bound to use various services of fintech. That is why the main objective of this study is to identify and investigate whether covid-19 is a blessing or curse for using fintech, especially in the urban consumers of Bangladesh. The study obtained the opinions of 160 samples from the consumers who are currently using fintech and living in Dhaka city through a survey questionnaire. All data have been collected from primary and secondary sources. The study finds that consumers are using fintech during the time of pandemic more than past and it seems that the changes are a blessing for the use of fintech. Furthermore, Covid-19 helped fintech for its growth, that is why it is high time for the urban people to capitalize on all the benefits of fintech as much as possible to survive and succeed in the new normal life. However, the outcomes of this article are limited by the size of the sample and the robustness of the analysis.

Keywords- Pandemic, Fintech, Urban Consumer Behavior, Covid-19.

I. INTRODUCTION

Financial technology commonly used as FinTech refers to the use of technology or technological innovation in financial sectors. It is a rapidly growing industry around the world. It makes many things easier such as online shopping, digital payment and also daily life transaction. New technology or technology-based application can disrupt the traditional financial market, which is developed by financial services and also it can be used for payment and other complex issues like AI and big data (Harahap et al., 2017). Fintech is a newly introduced platform, that imparts financial service through technologies to different types of users (Schueffel, 2016).
The area of fintech is very wide. According to Matthew Blake, Peter Vanham & Dustin Hughes, Fintech is a broad idea that can use technology to deliver financial services according to users’ choice and convenience. Priya & Anusha, 2019 include mobile banking, online banking, transfer of money, one to one transactions, blockchain, wallets etc to fintech. Fintech is undertaking a wide range of work on the financial and banking landscape (Jagtiani & Lemieux 2017). Some scholars portray the area of fintech. They define e-payment, e-transfer, crowdfunding (Chisthi 2016; Jiang et al 2018; Hendriyani & Raharja, 2019) cryptocurrencies (Goldstein et al., 2019) and crowdsource (Kunz & Muralidhar, 2017; Camacho et al 2019; Sul, 2020) as part of fintech.
Fintech is defined as “The fusion of Information Technology and Finance for providing the financial services for an affordable cost with a seamless user-friendly experience” (Rabbani et al., 2020). Fintech makes each part of finance effective and efficient by using technology. Bofondi & Gobbi, 2017 says, fintech boosts the flexibility and efficiency of financial services, fintech saves time and cost by using digital technology. It gives flexibility to all users by allowing business transactions from anywhere at any time (Anshari, Almunawar, Masri & Hamdan, 2019). Giving greater flexibility to the user and adapting to the existing one is the nature of fintech. (Fuster et al. (2019). Fintech is an important determinant of the cyclical position of the economy, also an indicator of economic growth (Aditya et al. 2019, Baker 2018, Galbraith and Tkacz, 2007).

Covid 19 and Economy

On the Last of December 2019, an unknown virus was detected in the city of China, Wuhan. Within a few months, it has spread around the globe. The government of many countries went for the lockdown to control the pandemic at a level. Though this pandemic mainly creates a health crisis, but it affects the economy too. With decreasing production, disruption in supply chains, loss of income, and disruption in the flow of credit; they have greatly impacted the whole economy (Fernandes, 2020). There are two causes; The escalation of the virus forces the governments around the world to go for lockdowns, social distancing, and quarantines. As a result, economic activities and financial markets have stepped down. And the other is the rate of growing virus generates fear and it encourages the market to opt for safety in consumption and investments (Ozili, 2020). Such situations directly and indirectly affected human behaviour and economic activity (Bartik et al., 2020; Nicola et al., 2020; Chetty et al., 2020). That forces many people to continue their life in segregation (Beaunoyer et al., 2020).

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