Research
DICRI investigates how digital platforms reshape credit access, repayment, and enforcement beyond traditional legal frameworks. The initiative combines comparative legal analysis, empirical fieldwork, and platform governance studies to examine how informal digital credit systems operate across jurisdictions.
Research Areas
Informal Digital Credit
Digital credit increasingly operates outside traditional banking channels. DICRI examines non-bank lending, Buy Now, Pay Later schemes, embedded finance, and app-based credit models that redefine eligibility, pricing, and contractual form. Particular attention is given to how digital infrastructures restructure access to credit and financial inclusion.
Platform-Based Enforcement
Credit enforcement is increasingly embedded in technical systems rather than formal legal procedures. DICRI studies automated deductions, behavioural nudging, reputational mechanisms, interface friction, and account restrictions as modes of enforcement-by-design. The focus lies on how these mechanisms reshape borrower protection and contestability.
Governance Without Law (GOVLAW)
GOVLAW develops a conceptual framework for understanding legal displacement in digital credit systems. Rather than operating within legal constraints alone, platforms increasingly determine credit access and repayment internally. The project analyses how governance shifts from courts and regulators to infrastructural decision-making.
Comparative Credit Governance
Digital credit practices often travel across jurisdictions while adapting to local regulatory environments. DICRI conducts cross-jurisdictional analysis across Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa to examine how legal traditions interact with platform-based credit systems and how regulatory responses diverge or converge.
Methodological Approach
DICRI combines doctrinal mapping, semi-structured interviews, surveys, and platform walkthrough analysis. By integrating legal analysis with empirical research and digital infrastructure studies, the initiative develops a comparative understanding of how credit governance operates in practice.