Winning Over Grassroots Consumers : An Empowerment Perspective of Yu’E Bao

Recent years have witnessed the great potential of technological innovations in helping developing economies tackle financial exclusion, a key obstacle in reducing poverty and accelerating economic growth. Yet, the way that technology innovations should be designed and utilized to deliver inclusive finance has remained obscure. In this study, we undertook an in-depth qualitative case study of Yu’E Bao, an online market fund, which has revolutionized the online finance sector in China. The incredible feat of Yu’E Bao has made financial institutions in China start focusing on potential cumulative wealth of the large population of financially underserved “grassroots consumers”. Drawing insights from empowerment theory, we explicate the mechanisms through which an IT-enabled innovation can successfully engage and leverage the financially underprivileged population to progress towards financial inclusion. Our findings underline important theoretical, economic and societal contributions, viz. exploitation of empowerment mechanisms, acknowledgment of grassroots’ economic potential, and IT-enabled financial inclusion