On Contextual Contradiction: A Field Study of Digital Payment Inclusion in Mexico

Digital payment technology allows financially excluded communities to access financial services. By crossing infrastructural, regulatory, and economic boundaries, digital payment includes unbanked people, as documented in African countries. However, in Mexico, where digital payment technology and infrastructure are present and highly developed for Latin Digital payment technology allows financially excluded communities to access financial services by crossing infrastructural, regulatory, and economic boundaries. However, there are also cases where its presence might lead to exclusion. In addition to these diverse findings, it remains unclear why exclusion prevails in Mexico, where digital payment technology is highly developed for Latin America. Consequently, this study addresses how and why the Mexican context conditions digital payment inclusion. Based on a dynamic understanding of context and a field study, we operationalise Mexico's contextual conditioning through inequalities. Using observations, interviews and documents, the study's results reveal what we term contextual contradiction. Socio-economic infrastructure separation, evolutionary regression, and informal legislation are contextual contradictions which convey a dynamic conditioning leading to digital payment inclusion and exclusion. These findings contribute to debates on contextual explanation by addressing how context and phenomenon emerge together without bounding, stabilising, or situating context.