Fintech Development and Corporate Innovation

Companies generally face difficulties in raising capital. The emergence of Fintech brings new opportunities to the reform of the financial system. It remains to be seen whether Fintech promotes corporate innovation performance. To explore this question, this paper uses data of A-share listed enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen markets in China from 2011–2017, and a prefecture cities level Fintech development index constructed on the data retrieved from The Peking University Digital Financial Inclusion of China (PKU-DFIIC), to examines the impact of Fintech on innovation performance. The result shows that Fintech development significantly improve corporate innovation performances through alleviating corporate financing constraints. The enriching literature on the determinants of the corporate innovation and the consequences of the Fintech was contributed by the current research. Meanwhile, this study also provides practical implications for policy makers and for investors to reduce financial barriers for listing of promising enterprises, so as to improve their independent innovation capacity.