Aghavni G. Hakobyan

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Digital government platforms are expected to accelerate the shift to cashless payments, and banks stand between the two: they hold the accounts that digital credentials open and process the government-to-person and person-to-government flows that digital services generate. Cross-country evidence for transition economies remains scarce and largely contemporaneous. The study aims to determine whether digital government maturity is associated with the uptake of cashless payment instruments contemporaneously or with a delay, and whether the deployment model shapes that association beyond aggregate index scores. Wave panels combining the Global Findex database (2011–2024) with the UN E-Government Development Index for eleven transition economies were estimated using pooled, fixed-effects, between-country, lagged, and first-difference specifications, supplemented by an exploratory annual panel of ATM density and a structured comparison of three deployment models. A strong cross-country association between GovTech maturity and both digital payment adoption (0.551, p < 0.001) and account ownership (0.730, p < 0.001) did not survive within-country identification: fixed-effects coefficients turned negative and insignificant, so H1-H3 are not supported. With a four-to-five-year lag, the Online Service Index entered positively and significantly in the baseline specification (0.290, p < 0.05); as significance is not retained with controls, the evidence is consistent with a delayed association rather than establishing it. Adoption expanded under all three deployment models, from 47% to 85% in Kazakhstan, 48% to 83% in Ukraine, and 12% to 61% in Armenia; what distinguished the cases was the interface between the state and private bank ecosystems, which aggregate indices do not capture.

Acknowledgment
Liudmyla Zakharkina’s contribution to this article was made within the framework of the research project “GovTech for Ukraine: A Digital, Secure, Transparent, and Equitable State in Times of War and Post-War Reconstruction” (registration number: 0126U000544), funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.