Financial stability in the digital age: a moderated mediation model of fintech growth, access to finance and tax revenue

Purpose Financial stability remains a central concern for regulators and fiscal authorities as digital financial development reshapes financial intermediation. This study aims to examine whether financial access mediates the association between fintech development and financial stability and whether tax revenue conditions the access-stability pathway. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a balanced panel of 434 country-year observations from 31 economies over 2010–2023, compiled from the World Bank World Development Indicators, Global Financial Development Database and IMF Financial Access Survey. Fintech development and financial stability are represented by principal-component indices, while financial access captures geographical and demographic banking reach. A regression-based second-stage moderated-mediation model is complemented by country and year fixed effects, country-clustered bootstrap inference, multigroup comparisons, lagged specifications and dynamic-panel estimators. Findings Fintech development is positively associated with financial access and financial stability, while financial access mediates the fintech−stability relationship. Tax revenue strengthens both the access-stability association and the corresponding indirect effect in contemporaneous specifications. The moderation pattern weakens in lagged and dynamic models, indicating that the direct and mediating relationships are more stable than the conditional effect. Practical implications Regulators should combine fintech expansion with policies that deepen effective access, strengthen supervision, protect consumers, improve data governance and enhance tax-administration capacity. Higher taxation alone should not be treated as a stability instrument. Originality/value This study integrates financial intermediation and fiscal-capacity theories within a panel conditional-process framework, identifying financial access as a transmission mechanism and tax revenue as an institutional boundary condition while distinguishing robust contemporaneous relationships from specification-sensitive conditional effects.