Digital Financial Vulnerability: Trust, Fraud, and Human Resilience

The rapid expansion of digital financial technologies is transforming how individuals and communities access financial services, manage money, make payments, invest, borrow, and interact with financial institutions. Mobile banking, digital payment platforms, cryptocurrencies, automated advisory systems, and artificial intelligence offer greater convenience and financial inclusion. At the same time, they create new social and behavioral risks that directly affect people’s financial security, autonomy, well-being, and trust.Digital financial vulnerability emerges when individuals and communities are unable to fully understand, evaluate, or safely navigate increasingly complex digital financial environments. People may be exposed to phishing, identity theft, social engineering, investment scams, financial misinformation, deepfakes, synthetic identities, and AI-generated fraudulent communication. These threats can result not only in financial loss but also in psychological distress, reduced confidence in digital services, social exclusion, and weakened trust in financial and public institutions.The effects of digital financial vulnerability are unevenly distributed. Older adults, young people, migrants, low-income households, individuals with limited digital or financial literacy, and communities with restricted access to reliable financial information may face heightened risks. Their ability to respond depends on digital skills, financial knowledge, social support, institutional protection, and access to trustworthy technologies.This Research Topic aims to examine how individuals and communities experience, interpret, and respond to digital financial risks. It welcomes interdisciplinary research that explores how these factors affect digital trust, financial behavior, AI-enabled fraud, misinformation, algorithmic decision-making, privacy, digital exclusion, consumer protection, and human resilience. It also seeks submissions that show how such effects might be ameliorated through educational, technological, organizational, and regulatory approaches that strengthen people’s capacity to make informed decisions, resist manipulation, recover from financial harm, and participate safely in digital financial systems.Topic Editor Iryna Mihus is the owner and director of OÜ “Scientific Center of Innovative Research”. The other Topic Editor declares no competing interests with regard to the Research Topic subject. Topic editors: Iryna Mihus, Sandeep Kumar Gupta Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84199/digital-financial-vulnerability-trust-fraud-and-human-resilience