The Impact of Digital Transformation on Financial Inclusion in Ukraine

This thesis examines how digital transformation has affected financial inclusion in Ukraine between 2019 and 2025. Over this period, Ukraine moved from a fragmented, paper-based public administration to a coordinated digital ecosystem built around the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Diia platform. The first part of the study uses the four-pillar model of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) to assess the regulatory reforms and digital infrastructure the state has put in place, covering digital identification and e-KYC, open payment systems, the digitisation of government payments, and the wider financial market infrastructure. The second part is an empirical analysis of how these changes affected the access, usage and quality of financial services. The findings show a clear and consistent association between digitalisation and financial inclusion: remote identification, account ownership and cashless payments all grew strongly and, importantly, continued to rise even during the full-scale war that began in 2022, when much physical banking infrastructure was damaged or closed. At the same time, the study identifies remaining limitations, mainly in the quality dimension, including uneven internet coverage, exposure to fraud, and levels of financial and digital literacy that have not kept pace with the rapid spread of digital tools. The thesis concludes that state-led digital transformation has played a central role in expanding and protecting financial inclusion in Ukraine, but that broad access and active usage are not yet enough to guarantee fully inclusive finance.