The development of Fintech provides an important opportunity to alleviate the supply-demand imbalance between banks and enterprises. From the perspective of bank credit allocation, this paper systematically examines the impact and mechanism of bank Fintech on corporate credit term, and makes an expanded analysis of the economic consequences of extending loan term. The study shows that: (1) Fintech strengthens the willingness of banks to supply long-term credit, thus significantly extending corporate credit term. (2) Bank Fintech extends corporate credit term through channels such as intensifying inter-bank competition, increasing bank liquidity creation, and alleviating bank-enterprise information asymmetry. (3) For enterprises with high R&D intensity, light-asset enterprises, private enterprises, and enterprises located in areas with well-developed new infrastructure or weak external governance environment, bank Fintech has a more obvious effect on extending their credit term. (4) The Fintech-induced extension of corporate credit term neither increases business risks, nor leads to the economy shifting “from real to virtual”, but the development of Fintech significantly promotes the formation of new quality productive forces in enterprises.

The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) From the perspective of research, it focuses on the impact of bank Fintech on corporate credit term, explores the role of internal characteristics and external environment of enterprises in this impact, and further studies its economic consequences from the aspects of business risks, promoting new quality productive forces, and shifting “from real to virtual”, which provides a decision-making basis for enterprises to achieve high-quality development. (2) In terms of index measurement, it constructs a bank Fintech index from the two dimensions of Fintech innovation and Fintech application, and constructs a multi-source heterogeneous dataset by integrating bank annual reports and Fintech patent application information, which makes up for the deficiency of using a single type of data to a certain extent. (3) In terms of mechanism, it explores the mechanism of bank Fintech on corporate credit term from three aspects: inter-bank competition, liquidity creation, and alleviating bank-enterprise information asymmetry, which provides a realistic way to effectively solve the problem of “low quality and efficiency of financial services to the real economy” proposed at the Central Financial Work Conference in 2023.