Agent Banking and Financial Inclusion in Nigeria (British Journal of Advanced Research)

Summary

• The study uses quarterly time-series data from 2013Q1 to 2025Q4 (N = 52) to test the effect of agent banking on financial inclusion in Nigeria.p.1
• Financial inclusion is proxied by active formal bank account holders, with agent outlets, transaction volume and real transaction value as explanatory variables.p.1
• ARDL bounds testing confirmed a statistically significant long-run cointegrating relationship among the variables.p.1
• Agent banking outlets and transaction volume have statistically significant positive long-run impacts on formal bank account adoption.p.1
• Data come from the CBN, NIBSS and NBS and cover 52 quarterly observations.p.21
• The highest pairwise correlation with bank account holders is for agent outlets, with r = 0.997030.p.23
• Real transaction value (LNVAL) is stationary at level, with an ADF test statistic of -4.2998.p.25

Key insights

1. Expanding agent outlet networks improves physical reach but does not guarantee adoption of formal accounts.p.3
2. High transaction volumes may reflect usage by existing account holders rather than new inclusions.p.3
3. The literature lacks work examining outlet expansion, transaction frequency and transaction value simultaneously.p.3
4. Agency Theory is the primary anchor, complemented by the Technology Acceptance Model and Diffusion of Innovations theory.p.8
5. Yahaya (2026) found a significant long-run coefficient of 4.862 between digital financial service transaction value and financial inclusion.p.12
6. The log-linear specification lets coefficients be read as elasticities of account holders to each agent banking indicator.p.20
7. Mixed orders of integration justify the ARDL bounds testing approach.p.25