Financial and Digital Literacy of Youth in Poland: Rationale and Directions of Development Strategy

The article substantiates the urgency of strengthening financial and digital literacy among Polish youth in the context of rapid digitalization, the diffusion of BNPL products, and rising household arrears. It distinguishes between conventional financial literacy and its digital dimension and frames a strategy-oriented inquiry that links competencies to decision points in real interfaces. The aim of the article is to substantiate the necessity of developing a comprehensive strategy for enhancing financial and digital literacy among youth in Poland, to identify the key problem areas that hinder the effective transfer of knowledge into practical behavior, and to outline strategic directions for curriculum design, digital safeguards, and equity-oriented monitoring. A structured desk review integrates Polish empirical evidence with competence descriptors for children and youth. Findings are mapped to four core domains (money and transactions; planning and managing finances; risk and reward; financial landscape) plus a transversal digital axis and are translated into performance tasks and indicators that allow disaggregation by educational track and locality. The article confirms comparatively solid conceptual knowledge alongside weak behavioral transfer, particularly in budgeting under income variability, building an emergency buffer, and interpreting the total cost of credit; in the digital sphere, binding constraints concern phishing resilience, permissions/data-consent management, provider verification, and interface navigation. Persistent gaps by school track and locality justify differentiated curricular carriers. These findings inform a strategy built on curriculum integration, digital-safety training, and “just-in-time” market tools (standardized total-cost calculators, BNPL checklists, aggregate-debt warnings), supported by partnerships with regulators and industry and by an annual Youth FDL Scorecard. Pairing practice-oriented instruction with embedded digital safeguards can translate knowledge into measurable behavior and reduce equity gaps. The article sets out concrete three-year targets and a scorecard architecture aligned with European frameworks to ensure transparent monitoring and continuous improvement.