How is Mobile-First Adoption Reshaping Financial Inclusion in These Markets?

This conversation with Freemarket, Fincra and Axiym discuss how mobile-first adoption is reshaping financial inclusion, but with a very deliberate shift in focus away from the glossy app layer and towards the plumbing underneath. The speakers acknowledge that user interfaces, mobile apps and now agentic AI “assistants” are evolving fast and making it easier for people to adopt digital financial services. But their main argument is that these are just the visible tip of the iceberg.

What really changes the game for financial inclusion, they explain, is the underlying infrastructure that fintechs are building – the payment rails, settlement layers, compliance workflows and connectivity that sit behind the tap-to-pay experience on a phone. Things like transaction cost, speed, uptime and perceived reliability are not magically created by a nice app; they’re a direct result of robust back-end systems that companies like Freemarket, Fincra, Axiym and their peers provide. That’s what allows mobile-first products and AI-powered agents to deliver a smooth experience to end users in the first place.

The speakers make the point that this infrastructure is what actually lets people “go mobile” and bypass traditional bank branches. If the rails behind those apps were patchy or slow, or if transactions frequently failed, users simply wouldn’t trust them. In that world, even the best-designed mobile app wouldn’t be enough – people would still prefer to queue at branches or stick with cash because those channels feel more predictable. So adoption isn’t just about education or UX; it’s about whether the system underneath behaves consistently enough to earn people’s trust.

From there, the conversation implicitly highlights the role of infrastructure providers in financial inclusion strategies. Industry players like Freemarket, Fincra and Axiym are not just “supporting” mobile apps; they’re building the core products and distribution networks that enable wallets, neobanks, agents and AI-powered interfaces to actually work in real life – across borders, currencies and regulatory environments. Their infrastructure lets a new mobile-first user send money, make a payment or receive funds reliably on a low-cost smartphone, without ever stepping into a branch.

Overall, the takeaway for a fintech and banking audience is: mobile-first adoption is transforming access to finance, but the real leverage is at the infrastructure layer. The companies that will move the needle on financial inclusion aren’t only the ones with the flashiest front-end experience – they’re the ones quietly building resilient, scalable rails that make those experiences trustworthy for millions of new users.