The development of digital financial inclusion helps create a healthy rural financial ecological environment and plays an important role in integrating rural tertiary industries. This paper incorporates digital financial inclusion into the rural tertiary industry integration research framework. Furthermore, it adopts the double-difference method to empirically analyze the impact of the development of digital financial inclusion on rural tertiary industry integration from the perspective of policy impact. In addition, it considers regional differences in the financial ecological environment; robustness tests were carried out using methods such as placebo tests and validated the conduction mechanism. The study through the double-difference model found that digital financial inclusion is very conducive to promoting rural tertiary industry integration; using the quantile DID (difference in differences) method to analyze the heterogeneity, it is concluded that there is a heterogeneous impact on rural tertiary industry integration. It exerts a more significant improvement in provinces and cities with higher rural tertiary industry integration levels. Constructing an intermediary effect model to verify the transmission mechanism concludes that the policy has promoted the improvement of rural tertiary industry integration efficiency by promoting technological innovation, improving agricultural modernization, and building a risk-sharing mechanism. Finally, it puts forward policy recommendations from optimizing the financial ecological environment, rationally allocating financial resources, and perfecting the transmission mechanism.

After a long struggle against poverty, the problem of absolute poverty among Chinese rural residents has been solved, but the problem of relative poverty still exists. With digitalization, the ecological environment of rural inclusive finance has been optimized. This paper empirically tests the individual fixed-effect model and finds that digital inclusive finance has a positive income-increasing effect on rural residents. Wage income, operating income, and transfer income among the income types undergo a certain degree of promotion, while property income is affected to the contrary. In addition, digital inclusive finance has the same effect on farmers’ income increases in the east and central regions of China. However, it has a slightly smaller impact on farmers in the west. This paper uses a spatial econometric model and finds that promoting the development of local digital inclusive finance will enhance the income level of local farmers and increase the income of neighboring farmers. Therefore, this paper proposes to speed up the development of digital inclusive finance, optimize the rural financial ecological environment, strengthen government supervision and other recommendations, further enhance farmers’ income, and achieve common prosperity.

This study analyzes data from companies listed on the Small and Medium Enterprise Board and the Growth Enterprise Market between 2011 and 2021 to assess the impact of digital inclusive finance on SME innovation. It also explores how this effect varies across different industries. The results indicate a significant positive correlation between the digital inclusive finance index and the SMEs’ innovation output at the 1% significance level. Furthermore, improving the coverage breadth and usage depth of digital inclusive finance is more effective in promoting SME technological innovation than enhancing their digitalization level. Additionally, the heterogeneity analysis underscores its significant impact on driving innovation within the secondary sector. Mechanism testing reveals that digital inclusive finance enhances the innovation ecosystem by reducing financing barriers and improving access to capital. The study recommends accelerating the development of a digital inclusive financial system and optimizing the allocation of financial resources. Furthermore, it emphasizes the need to support digital transformation, foster talent development, and implement targeted industrial policies. These efforts are crucial for unlocking the full innovation potential of SMEs and driving high-quality development.

This study analyzes data from companies listed on the Small and Medium Enterprise Board and the Growth Enterprise Market between 2011 and 2021 to assess the impact of digital inclusive finance on SME innovation. It also explores how this effect varies across different industries. The findings highlight the crucial role of digital inclusive finance in boosting SME innovation capacity. Additionally, the heterogeneity analysis underscores its significant impact on driving innovation within the secondary sector. Mechanism testing reveals that digital inclusive finance enhances the innovation ecosystem by reducing financing barriers and improving access to capital. The study recommends accelerating the development of a digital inclusive financial system and optimizing the allocation of financial resources. Furthermore, it emphasizes the need to support digital transformation, foster talent development, and implement targeted industrial policies to unlock the full innovation potential of SMEs, thereby promoting high-quality development.

Industrial sector still remains underdeveloped contributing less than 10% to GDP. This study investigates this problem in the industrial sector by analysing the impact of digital finance on Kenyan enterprise’s performance. By accessing secondary data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) for Kenya (N=440), we conducted multiple regression analysis to test the association of digital finance adoption score to firm performance measures. The results obtained indicated that digital finance adoption had no statistically significant impact on labour productivity or profit margins but had strong links with dynamic capabilities. Specifically, a high digital finance score has strong power to increase the likelihood of a firm introducing both product innovations (OR = 4.25, p < 0.01) and process innovations (OR = 3.62, p < 0.01). It is also associated with sales growth. In conclusion the findings obtained suggest that in the Kenyan context, digital finance functions less as a digital tool for facilitating existing operations and more as a digital platform that enables innovation and market expansion. Digital finance truly transforms the industrial sector and can bring about huge development in Kenya, policy and product design must evolve beyond a narrow focus on financial inclusion. Instead, they should plan to invest in digital finance as a foundation for creating firm-level adaptive and competitive capabilities. Keywords: Digital Finance Adoption, World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES), Labor Productivity, Market Expansion, Financial Inclusion.