Consuming power relative deprivation serves as a metric for measuring consumer inequality, providing a direct insight into the authentic disparities in welfare between residents. The effective operation of the financial system facilitates the individual’s optimization of expected income distribution through lending, and it can also alleviate the consumption gap between different groups by enhancing the purchasing power of the less affluent. Digital finance, with its ability to shatter the constraints of time and space, low barriers to entry, seamless trading, and low transaction costs, can effectively expand financial inclusion and penetration, enhance the efficiency of financial resource allocation, thereby augmenting people’s sense of happiness. The pervasive influence of digital finance on consumption is primarily grounded in two facets: research into the effects of digital finance on consumer expenditure and consumption structure, and the impact of household debt on both expenditure and structure. The article concludes with a summary of the progress in the study of digital finance’s encroachment and the relative deprivation of consumption, also providing insights into future research issues.