Politická ekonomie X:X | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1506

Fintech Borrowing and Business Changes During the Pandemic

Kunhyui Kim, Peter J. Morgan, Martina Marsili
Kunhyui Kim (corresponding author), Graduate School of Economics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Peter J. Morgan, Asian Development Bank Institute, Tokyo, Japan
Martina Marsili, Accenture, Japan

Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in ASEAN play a significant role in ASEAN GDP, but their access to financial services or Fintech has been relatively low. In this context, the emergence of companies offering Fintech services, or technology-enabled financial services, has been welcomed to access financial services that would otherwise be difficult to obtain from formal financial institutions during the pandemic. Our research focusses on five Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, to answer the following questions. First, what is the impact of the usage of Fintech platforms on business performance, particularly in terms of revenue and profit, during the pandemic? Then, we evaluate the channels of firm activities driven by Fintech borrowing during the COVID-19 period. The empirical findings show that Fintech borrowing generally improved MSMEs\' business performance during the pandemic, both revenues and profits.

Keywords: Business performance, fintech borrowing, Heckman ordered probit, pandemic, probit, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises

Received: October 9, 2024; Revised: March 12, 2025; Accepted: April 13, 2025; Prepublished online: December 16, 2025 

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