Motivation
Women workers in India’s garment sector often earn regular wages. Yet many remain financially vulnerable due to limited access to flexible liquidity, formal credit, and secure savings, compounded by social pressures that constrain financial control. Unexpected expenses, rigid pay cycles, lack of access to formal credit systems, and reliance on informal borrowing contribute to financial stress and constrain women’s economic agency. Employer-enabled digital financial services (DFS) offer a promising way to address these challenges by embedding financial access within the workplace, including through products such as earned wage access (EWA), which can ease short-term liquidity constraints. Beyond immediate liquidity relief, EWA may also serve as a stepping stone to greater engagement with digital credit by reducing dependence on informal borrowing, building familiarity with formal financial tools, and facilitating creditworthiness. Understanding whether and how such employer-enabled pathways translate into deeper financial engagement and improved financial well-being is critical, given the growing use of these fintech tools in developing economies.
Objective
The study examines whether access to employer-enabled digital financial tools, such as earned wage access (EWA) and digital credit, improves workers’ financial behavior, financial well-being, and women’s economic empowerment, and whether additional financial management tools strengthen these effects. Specifically, it asks how access to wage-linked liquidity and digital credit facilitate financial deepening by enabling workers to transition away from informal borrowing toward greater engagement with formal credit, stronger financial resilience, and women’s enhanced participation in household financial decision-making. The research team will implement an individual-level randomized controlled trial with approximately 1,800 garment workers (the majority women) employed in three factories operated by Shahi Exports in Karnataka, India. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of four groups: 1) Access to Digital Credit only, 2) Access to EWA and Digital Credit, 3) Access to EWA and Digital Credit along with a Financial Diaries application, or 4) business as usual. The study will employ survey data, high frequency data, and administrative records on product use and workplace outcomes, enabling analysis of overall impacts as well as underlying mechanisms.
Proposed Impact
This research will generate policy-relevant evidence on how employer-enabled digital financial services bundling of EWA and digital credit, along with financial management tools, affect women workers’ financial well-being and economic empowerment. The findings will inform the design of inclusive, scalable financial wellness programs that improve financial deepening and resilience without increasing debt stress or undermining agency. For employers and fintech providers, the study will offer guidance on how workplace-based DFS can enhance worker well-being while also improving attendance, retention, and productivity, without requiring firms to bear financial or regulatory risk. For policymakers and practitioners, the results will shed light on how voluntary, bundled digital finance can support women’s empowerment in formal labor markets, contributing to broader debates on financial inclusion, workplace intermediation, and gender-equitable economic growth.
Photo credit: Eugene Nelmin on Unsplash
