Digital competency as a key to the financial inclusion of young people in complex scenarios: A focus groups study

Young people’s financial and digital literacy have been studied independently and in-depth during the last decades. However, digital financial literacy as a compound concept is novel and still needs to be explored in the scientific literature. This work investigated young people’s perception of their digital financial culture, identified factors that hinder or facilitate it, and explored their preferences in the training modalities for improvement. Twenty-two focus groups were carried out in different Mexican educational institutions based on diversity criteria. The evidence shows that: (1) young people perceive the need for digital financial education linked mainly to the understanding of critical concepts, the use of mobile applications, online financial operations, and digital financial security; (2) some voluntarily exclude themselves from online finance, this being one of the main obstacles in the development of digital financial culture; (3) the digital financial culture gap is accentuated more among young people in public educational institutions and upper secondary education; (4) they have a preference for emerging technological and digital resources for their training in digital finance. These findings make it possible to contextualize training proposals that favor the financial inclusion of young people in complex scenarios brought about by the digital transformation of the economy and society.