Beyond Account Ownership: Digital Capability, Secure Device Control, and Merchant-Payment Use Across 74 Economies

Abstract

Financial-account access and digital merchant-payment use are distinct dimensions of inclusion. Combining Global Findex historical subgroup series with the 2024 cross-section, we prioritize a common-sample analysis of 62,480 phone-owning adults across 74 economies. Weighted economy-fixed-effects logistic models show positive associations of smartphone ownership (OR 1.25), recent internet use (OR 1.77), basic messaging capability (OR 1.89), and secure device control (OR 1.93) with digital merchant-payment use. A three-category device-security specification distinguishes device locking from autonomous credential management; the latter is associated with greater merchant-payment use than locking without autonomy (OR 1.55, 95% economy-cluster bootstrap percentile interval 1.35–1.77; standardized difference 5.71 percentage points, 95% interval 3.87–7.51; 1999 resamples). Positive internet, messaging, and security associations persist for a narrower digitally paid online-purchase outcome, with module-routed samples of 40,678 and 42,529. Results for all four digital predictors remain positive across four weighting specifications; exploratory device-security interactions with gender and Latin America and the Caribbean survive Benjamini–Hochberg adjustment. Historical changes in gender and income disparities vary across balanced-economy sets and weighting assumptions; economy-resampling intervals do not establish universal faster convergence of account access than payment use. The observational design, questionnaire routing, and nonrandom module coverage prohibit causal and global-population interpretations.