When a Bank Account Is Not the Full Picture: Account Types and Financial Inclusion
When the World Bank’s Global Findex survey reports what share of adults “have an account,” it counts any account at a bank, another financial institution, or a mobile money provider. That single headline number — 89% of adults in India (2024), for instance — is the most commonly cited metric of financial inclusion. But it masks an important distinction: not all accounts are bank accounts.
The Findex also tracks bank account ownership separately (indicator fiaccount.t.d), and the gap between the two measures tells a fascinating story about how different economies achieve financial inclusion. In some countries, banks are the sole channel. In others, mobile money providers have become the primary — sometimes the only — access point for financial services.
The Gap: Where Mobile Money Makes the Difference
Across 145 economies with both metrics, the gap ranges from essentially zero in high-income countries to nearly 50 percentage points in economies where mobile money has leapfrogged traditional banking. For context on where overall account ownership stands, see our analysis of the most and least banked economies.
| Economy | Bank account | All accounts | Gap (pp) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zambia | 24.1% | 72.7% | 48.6 |
| Uganda | 26.2% | 72.8% | 46.6 |
| Kenya | 45.4% | 90.1% | 44.7 |
| Gabon | 24.8% | 68.2% | 43.4 |
| Ghana | 38.7% | 81.2% | 42.5 |
| Congo, Rep. | 14.7% | 55.6% | 40.9 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | 16.8% | 57.6% | 40.8 |
| Cameroon | 21.0% | 60.9% | 39.9 |
| Liberia | 13.9% | 52.2% | 38.3 |
| Malawi | 12.4% | 50.4% | 38.0 |
These are all Sub-Saharan African economies, and the pattern is unmistakable: the gap is the story of mobile money. Kenya is the paradigmatic case — 90.1% of adults have some form of account, a figure that would place it alongside many European economies. Yet only half that number have a traditional bank account. The difference is almost entirely explained by mobile money accounts.
Where Banks Still Dominate
At the other extreme, many economies show virtually no gap at all — total account ownership is essentially equal to bank account ownership. These are typically high-income economies where mobile money never gained a foothold, or economies where mobile money providers are simply not a significant channel.
| Economy | Bank account | All accounts | Gap (pp) |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 97.0% | 97.0% | 0.0 |
| United Kingdom | 99.3% | 99.3% | 0.0 |
| Germany | 98.3% | 98.3% | 0.0 |
| Japan | 98.5% | 98.5% | 0.0 |
| China | 89.4% | 89.4% | 0.0 |
| Brazil | 85.6% | 86.4% | 0.8 |
| India | 88.7% | 89.0% | 0.3 |
| Mexico | 52.4% | 53.0% | 0.6 |
| Turkiye | 81.5% | 81.6% | 0.1 |
| Nigeria | 59.7% | 63.3% | 3.6 |
Note that India — often cited as a mobile-payments success story — shows virtually no gap between bank and total account ownership. This is because India’s Jan Dhan Yojana program opened hundreds of millions of bank accounts, and its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) sits on top of the existing banking system rather than replacing it. The digital payment interface is new, but the account underneath is a bank account.
Nigeria is an interesting middle case: a 3.6 percentage point gap suggests mobile money plays a real but modest role relative to banking. For a deeper comparison of how different payment channels stack up, see credit cards vs. mobile money.
The Middle Ground
Between the extremes, a spectrum of economies shows moderate gaps where mobile money is present but not yet transformative. For example:
- Philippines: 33.5% bank, 50.2% total — a 16.7 pp gap reflecting the growing but incomplete role of mobile wallets like GCash and PayMaya.
- Bangladesh: 32.9% bank, 43.3% total — a 10.4 pp gap driven by bKash and other mobile financial services.
- Indonesia: 52.4% bank, 56.3% total — a modest 3.9 pp gap in a country where GoPay, OVO, and digital banks are expanding but banks remain dominant.
For more context on how mobile money agents extend financial access in these economies, see our article on the mobile money agent network.
Why the Distinction Matters
The bank account vs. total account distinction is not academic. It matters for several reasons:
Product depth. Bank accounts typically offer a wider range of services — savings accounts with interest, overdraft facilities, term deposits, and integration with formal credit markets. Mobile money accounts are more limited in product scope. For an analysis of savings behavior specifically, see our blog post on how the world saves.
Regulatory protection. Deposit insurance schemes (like the FDIC in the United States or DICGC in India) typically cover bank deposits but not mobile money balances. In a crisis, the difference can be material — as Lebanon’s depositors learned, though that case involved failing banks, not mobile money.
Credit access. Formal borrowing typically requires a bank relationship. Adults whose only account is a mobile money wallet may struggle to access credit at regulated rates. Our analysis of how the world borrows shows that bank account holders are significantly more likely to have formal credit.
Financial stability data. Central banks and regulators track bank deposits, lending, and capital adequacy through established reporting frameworks. Mobile money flows, while increasingly important, operate under different regulatory and reporting regimes.
The Geography of Account Infrastructure
Mapping the gap also reveals something about the infrastructure behind financial inclusion. In economies where the gap is large (Sub-Saharan Africa), the constraint is not demand for financial services — Kenya’s 90.1% overall account ownership proves demand exists. The constraint is the high cost of building and maintaining brick-and-mortar bank branches in sparsely populated areas. Mobile money solved this by using a network of human agents rather than physical branches. For more on this, see our article on where banking still means walking in.
In economies where the gap is near zero (high-income countries and parts of Asia and Latin America), banks were already dense enough to reach most adults before mobile money became available. Mobile payments in these markets tend to layer on top of existing bank accounts rather than replacing them.
Sources & method
All figures are observed values from the World Bank Global Findex 2024 survey wave (unless noted otherwise), as compiled in FinStatGlobe’s derived country datasets. Two indicators are compared: “Account ownership at a financial institution” (fiaccount.t.d — accounts at banks, credit unions, or other formal financial institutions) and “Account ownership” (account.t.d — the same, plus mobile money accounts). Only 145 economies with both indicators available are included. The gap is defined as total account ownership minus bank account ownership, expressed in percentage points. No figures on this page are projections. See our methodology page for how derived datasets are built and how survey-based indicators differ from administrative data.