Major financial inclusion progress made since 2011, World Bank says

Great progress has been made in financial inclusion since 2011, when only half of adults worldwide had a bank or other financial account, according to the World Bank. The 2025 Global Findex Report shows that number is now close to 80 percent.

The report notes that while the trends it describes are in the behavior of individual users, a supportive enabling environment is crucial to the establishment and continuance of those trends. An enabling environment is one in which digital public infrastructure (DPI) like digital IDs, data exchange and fast payment systems are present.

The 342-page report shows that 95 percent of adults in low and middle-income countries now have ID, making it near-universal everywhere accept Sub-Saharan Africa. Less than 70 percent of the people in eight countries in the region, the Republic of Congo, Guinea, Mozambique, Niger, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda, have ID documents. The impacts that this lack of ID has on their lives and ability to buy a SIM card, vote or access different kinds of public and private-sector services is explored. The expense and travel required to acquire an ID persist as the most common barriers.

The majority of the world’s 850 million people without ID live in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to 2023 figures from the World Bank’s ID4D initiative.

The World Bank also highlights the value of connectivity, ID and digital financial services for mitigating the effects of natural disasters.

“Among adults in high-exposure economies, 80 percent have ID,” the World Bank says. “Though online digital ID that can be used to access services remotely is less common than foundational ID cards, it is gaining attention as a tool for ID holders to use if displaced after extreme weather events.”

There are still 1.3 billion adults without a financial account, through some 900 million of them have mobile phones, and over half of those are smartphones. Despite these encouraging figures, the report identifies lower ownership rates for mobile phones with native biometric capabilities in Sub-Saharan Africa as one possible reason why the region lags behind in financial inclusion, with only 35 percent of adults possessing a savings account.

Digital payments are up, and the gender gap, though still significant, has narrowed.

“Financial inclusion has the potential to improve lives and transform entire economies,” says World Bank Group President Ajay Banga in the announcement. “Digital finance can convert this potential into reality, but several ingredients need to be in place. At the World Bank Group, we’re working on all of them. We’re helping countries get their people access to new or improved digital IDs. We’re constructing social protection programs with digital cash-transfer systems that deliver resources directly to those in need. We’re modernizing payment systems and helping to remove regulatory roadblocks — so that people and businesses have the financing they need to innovate and create jobs.”

Article Topics

digital ID  |  digital payments  |  digital public infrastructure  |  financial inclusion  |  Identification for Development (ID4D)  |  legal identity  |  SDG 16.9  |  World Bank