Access to financial services is crucial for economic development. Current and savings accounts allow households to secure their cash balances, to carry out transactions using associated means of payment, to smooth their income and consumption in the face of economic shocks and variable incomes, and to finance significant expenses and investments. Access is particularly crucial for the poorest households, who are more often constrained and exposed to unpredictable income shocks more frequently. This sensitive issue in developing countries has become an important issue also in developed economies that have begun to pay increasing attention to this issue. The European Union, in particular, has placed the reduction of financial exclusion among its strategic objectives for 2021.

The Internet, telecommunications networks and digital technologies are profoundly changing access to financial services. Consumers are increasingly using the Internet to make online purchases, as well as so-called digital payment methods such as payment cards, or services offered by Internet payment service providers (Bagnall et al., 2016). These long-distance relationships are also popular with consumers for all their banking transactions such as account management, savings, loans and insurance. Specialized banks, known as neo-banks, now only offer remote banking services via mobile. But the digitization of finance requires territories to be accessible to telecommunications equipment and infrastructures. However, the access of people and businesses to digital technology is not equal on French territory, which can affect online consumer spending but also the strategies for locating businesses in the territories. An absence of connection of territories to telecommunications infrastructures decreases, for example, the ability of businesses to equip themselves with electronic payment terminals, and may lead them to favor more connected urban areas.

The purpose of the research program is to focus on the link between access and use of financial infrastructures and the economic development of territories. This program is based on three axes:

• Define and measure using indicators the concepts of inclusion and financial inequalities between territories in space (between territories) and time (dynamics).
• Analyze how access to these financial infrastructures affects the economic development of territories (household consumption expenditure, exchanges between businesses, mobility of actors in territories).
• Study the regulatory changes or public policies necessary to reduce these territorial financial inequalities, and allow recommendations to financial and territorial actors to limit this divide. This program is original from an academic point of view. The academic literature on financial inclusion is primarily focused on developing countries (Beck, 2008). This work focuses more particularly on the deficiency in the supply of financial infrastructures (non-existence of banks). Some more recent works focus on financial exclusion in developed countries (Demirguc-Kunt et al., 2019; Barboni et al., 2017). Statistics show that exclusion is not marginal in developed countries. But this work is essentially focused on consumers (bank account holding, card). Several arguments are put forward to explain financial exclusion. There are supply-side effects (service prices, red tape, credit history requirements, guarantees (including identification) requirements (Washington, 2006). In addition, existing products and their characteristics — for example, minimum account balances, overdraft fees, low returns on savings, etc. — are not appropriate to the needs of people with low and unstable incomes. There are also popular effects such as the lack of trust in banks, the protection of personal data, and cognitive biases. To our knowledge, there is no in-depth academic work that includes consumers, businesses and territories.

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