Inclusion without protection? Consumer vulnerability in Indonesia’s digital finance boom

Indonesia is widely celebrated as a financial inclusion success story. Within a decade, digital finance and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending have drawn millions of previously unbanked citizens into the formal financial system, apparently resolving a long-standing paradox in which a profitable banking sector coexisted with mass exclusion. This commentary argues that the celebration is premature. The same technologies that expanded access have generated a new class of consumers who are included but acutely vulnerable: exposed to illegal lending platforms, predatory pricing, misuse of personal data, intimidating debt collection, and over-indebtedness. Drawing on Indonesian and international evidence, I contend that the dominant policy metric the share of adults with access to formal financial services is no longer fit for purpose, and that financial literacy campaigns, the default policy response to consumer harm, cannot alone carry the burden of protection. I propose that inclusion be reconceptualized as a triad of access, capability, and protection, in which each element is measured, regulated, and evaluated jointly rather than sequentially. The commentary closes with implications for Indonesian regulators, for cross-country measurement exercises such as the Global Findex, and for a research agenda that shifts from counting accounts to assessing welfare outcomes. Keywords: financial inclusion; consumer protection; fintech; peer-to-peer lending; financial literacy