The scale of exclusion around the world
Globally, 69%[1] of adults — 3.8 billion people — have an account at a bank or mobile money provider. Between 2014 and 2017, 515 million adults worldwide opened an account at a financial institution or through a mobile money provider.
In high-income economies 94% of adults have an account; in developing economies, 63% do. The World Bank breaks down the level of account ownership by regions:
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In Sub-Saharan Africa, the share of adults with a mobile money account is at 21%.
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In East Asia and the Pacific, 71% of adults have an account.
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In Europe and Central Asia, account ownership reached 65% in 2017.
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In the Middle East and North Africa, 52% of men but only 35% of women have an account, the largest gender gap of any region.
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In South Asia, the share of adults with an account reached 70%.
However, with all the progress, 1.7 billion adults globally remain unbanked.
Why do 1.7 billion people globally remain unbanked?
56%[2] of all unbanked adults are women.
Poorer people also account for a disproportionate share of the unbanked. Globally, half of the unbanked adults come from the poorest 40% of households within their economy, the other half from the wealthiest 60%.
But the pattern varies among economies. In those where half or more of adults are unbanked, the unbanked are as likely to come from a poorer household as from a wealthier one.
