What Total Financial Exclusion Looks Like: Inside the World's Lowest Account-Ownership Countries
Introduction
Most discussions of financial inclusion compare countries in the 30–95% range of adult account ownership — a wide band, but one where banks, mobile wallets, or both have at least a foothold. At the very bottom of the global Findex distribution, a different picture emerges: economies where fewer than one in ten adults has any kind of formal or mobile financial account at all. South Sudan, at 5.8% (2021), anchors that extreme — the lowest figure in FinStatGlobe’s entire 145-economy dataset. This piece uses that case, and the handful of economies near it, to explain what drives total financial exclusion and why it looks different from ordinary low inclusion. For a real-world hook — South Sudan is currently grouped with Nigeria, Cameroon and Cabo Verde in FIFA World Cup qualifying — see our companion data report on the financial inclusion gap in that qualifying group.
The bottom of the global table
| Rank (of 145) | Country | Account ownership | Data year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 138 | Madagascar | 24.5% | 2024 |
| 139 | Nicaragua | 23.5% | 2024 |
| 140 | Lebanon | 23% | 2024 |
| 141 | Chad | 20.9% | 2024 |
| 142 | Niger | 14.8% | 2024 |
| 143 | Yemen | 11.9% | 2022 |
| 144 | Afghanistan | 9.7% | 2021 |
| 145 | South Sudan | 5.8% | 2021 |
Source: World Bank Global Findex, via FinStatGlobe derived datasets.
The gap between rank 138 and rank 145 is itself larger than the gap between many mid-table economies. Between Madagascar (24.5%) and South Sudan (5.8%) sits a nearly 19-point drop packed into just seven ranking positions — evidence that the very bottom of the distribution isn’t a smooth tail, it’s a cliff. On digital payment adoption, the same six economies again occupy the bottom of the table, with South Sudan’s 4.8% (2021) the lowest recorded value for that indicator too.
What makes these economies different, not just poorer
It’s tempting to read this list as simply “the poorest countries,” but that’s not quite right. Several economies with lower GDP per capita post far higher account ownership than Niger, Chad, or South Sudan — because financial exclusion at this extreme correlates more closely with state fragility and conflict history than with income alone. Four of the bottom six — Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Chad — have experienced sustained civil conflict within the past two decades, which disrupts the bank-branch networks, national ID systems, and mobile network infrastructure that account ownership depends on. Formal accounts require some combination of a nearby bank branch or mobile money agent, a functioning telecom network, and often a form of identification — all three of which are casualties of prolonged conflict. For how conflict-adjacent economies compare on the physical banking network itself, see where banking still means walking in and our report on bank branch and ATM density.
Why mobile money hasn’t closed the gap everywhere
In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile money leapfrogged traditional banking — Kenya (87.5%) and Ghana (78.3%) show how far a telecom-agent network can extend financial access without bank branches. But leapfrogging still requires a working telecom network and a functioning agent-cash economy — both are casualties of the same conflict dynamics that suppress bank account ownership. That’s why South Sudan has no meaningful mobile money coverage in FinStatGlobe’s dataset at all, while Cameroon, which has not experienced comparable nationwide conflict, reaches 55.1% mobile money ownership despite middling bank account ownership. See how mobile money works offline for the infrastructure question in more detail, and the mobile money agent network for what that agent layer actually requires to function.
Remittances as a partial substitute
One pattern recurs across several of the most excluded economies: remittances flow in even where domestic financial infrastructure has collapsed. South Sudan received an estimated $1.2 billion in personal remittances in 2023 despite its 5.8% account ownership rate — informal cash and hawala-style transfer networks fill a gap that formal banking cannot. This is a broader pattern across fragile and conflict-affected states; see migration and remittance flows for how population displacement and remittance dependence interact, and account-based domestic remittances for how the picture changes once a formal account is available to receive transfers through.
Analysis: measuring exclusion honestly
A methodological note matters here: several of the economies at the very bottom of this list — South Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen — have Findex data from 2021 or 2022 rather than the latest 2024 wave, because ongoing instability made a fresh nationally representative survey infeasible. That means today’s true figure could differ from what’s shown, in either direction. FinStatGlobe always cites the actual survey year rather than projecting a 2024-equivalent value for these cases; see reading fintech statistics responsibly for why that distinction matters, and how we project 2026 for which indicators do and do not get a forward-looking estimate. Extreme financial exclusion is real and measurable, but it is also disproportionately found in the countries hardest to survey — a caveat that belongs alongside every number in this piece.
Sources & method
All figures are drawn from the World Bank Global Findex survey (2021, 2022, and 2024 waves, cited with each country’s actual survey year) and World Development Indicators for remittance inflows (BX.TRF.PWKR.CD.DT), as stored in FinStatGlobe’s derived per-country datasets. Rankings are computed across the 145 economies with account ownership data and 142 with digital payment adoption data in the current dataset. No figures are projected or estimated by FinStatGlobe; where a country’s latest available wave is older than 2024, that year is stated explicitly. See our methodology page for the full data pipeline.