Financial literacy in the digitalized era: A systematic review and bibliometric mapping of highly-cited research (2014–2025)

Digital technologies have reshaped how individuals manage, invest and safeguard their financial resources and financial literacy has become a foundational skill for sound financial decision-making and long-term financial well-being. This paper analyses a transparently reported, curated corpus of highly-cited Web of Science-indexed publications on financial literacy (n = 14, 2014–2025, 1,178 combined citations) and situates that analysis within an integrated review of 36 further peer-reviewed studies spanning financial planning, behavioural finance, digital financial literacy and financial inclusion. Three objectives guide the study: (1) mapping publication trends, key journals and influential contributors (2) identifying intellectual themes and emerging research clusters through citation and keyword co-occurrence analysis and (3) surfacing unresolved gaps to inform future theory, policy and practice. The review shows that financial literacy has broadened from a knowledge-based construct into a multidimensional one encompassing behavioural competence, digital capability, financial inclusion and well-being with citation activity accelerating markedly after 2020. Persistent gaps remain in geographic coverage, the behavioural depth of existing measures, the study of emerging digital-finance technologies and the long-term evaluation of financial-education programmes. This review offers future research that provide insights for policymakers, educators, financial institutions and researchers seeking to build financial skills and support long-term financial growth in a digital world.