WHEN CREDIT BECOMES A CONSTRAINT: THE LONG-TERM DEBT PARADOX OF FINTECH LENDING AND BORROWER FINANCIAL RESILIENCE IN INDIA

FinTech lending is designed and marketed around short tenor, instant disbursal, and flexible, one-off borrowing - the antithesis of long-term formal debt. This study tests whether that short-term design nonetheless produces a long-term debt paradox: a persistent, structurally embedded financial constraint that behaves like chronic long-term debt despite no single loan being long tenor. Using survey data from 432 digital-credit borrowers in Bangalore, India, the study separately tests four candidate long-term-constraint mechanisms-usage tenure, borrowing frequency, repayment-burden ratio, and concurrent loan stacking (holding three or more active digital loans simultaneously) -against over-indebtedness and financial resilience. Tenure, frequency, and repayment-burden ratio show no significant association with over-indebtedness or resilience.