Bank Accounts: India Up 11.5 Points, the Median Country 0.7

In 2024, 78.7% of the world’s adults had an account at a bank, another financial institution or a mobile money provider, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex survey. In 2021 it was 73.8%.

That 4.9-point rise is the headline. It is not what happened in most countries.

The typical country barely moved

117 economies were surveyed in both 2021 and 2024. The median change between the two rounds is 0.7 percentage points.

Sixty-nine rose and forty-eight fell. But Findex figures come from surveys of about a thousand adults per country, and small changes are within the margin of error. Set the bar at five points and the picture is clearer: 37 economies rose by five or more, 11 fell by five or more, and 69 — more than half — moved by less than five points either way.

The world figure rose much more than the typical country because the World Bank weights it by population. A large move in a populous economy shifts the world number far more than the same move in a small one.

Where the big moves were

India went from 77.5% to 89.0%, an 11.5-point gain that puts it level with China at 89.4%. Kenya rose 10.9 points to 90.1%. Turkiye rose 7.5 to 81.6%.

The steepest rises in large payment markets came from lower bases: Nigeria from 45.3% to 63.3%, Egypt from 27.4% to 43.1%, and Viet Nam from 56.3% in 2022 to 70.6%. Across all 117 economies, the Kyrgyz Republic gained most, 27.2 points to 72.3%, followed by Zambia at 24.2 points and Senegal at 20.5.

Three large markets went the other way. Bangladesh fell from 52.8% to 43.3%. Thailand slipped from 95.6% to 91.8%. The Philippines was effectively flat, 51.4% to 50.2%.

And Pakistan, at 27.3%, is still the lowest of the fourteen large payment markets compared here, up from 21.0%.

The gap between men and women narrowed

Worldwide, 80.86% of men and 76.63% of women had an account in 2024, a gap of 4.22 points. In 2021 the gap was 4.97. In low- and middle-income economies it fell further, from 6.36 points to 4.95.

Women are ahead of men in 27 of the 139 economies with 2024 data. The widest lead is in the Philippines, where 57.1% of women and 43.0% of men have an account. Men lead by ten points or more in 33 economies, most of all Algeria, at 51.9% against 18.1%.

Why this matters

Account ownership is the floor under every other digital payment. A wallet, a payout or a cross-border transfer needs somewhere to land, and this survey is the only measure of that floor that covers most of the world on a consistent basis.

For payment providers the useful reading is the distribution, not the average. The world figure says growth continues. The median says that in a typical market, the share of adults who can receive a digital payment barely changed in three years — and in the markets where it did change, the moves were large enough to reshape them. Nigeria, Egypt, Viet Nam and India look materially different in 2024 from 2021. Most of the rest look the same.

What this is not

These are survey estimates, with sampling error of a few points per economy. Changes smaller than that may not be real, which is why this article reports moves against a five-point threshold as well as raw changes.

Survey timing and method can differ between rounds, and the 2021 round was fielded during the pandemic. Some of the larger falls — Italy from 97.3% to 86.0%, Poland from 95.7% to 86.1% — are in economies where near-universal account ownership is otherwise well established, and a single round-to-round drop of that size should be read with caution rather than as evidence that adults closed their accounts.

The measure records whether an adult has an account, not whether it is used. It says nothing about how often people pay or are paid digitally.

The world and developing-economy figures are the World Bank’s population-weighted aggregates, not averages computed by HaiPay. HaiPay did not contact the World Bank.

What to watch

Whether the next round confirms the large falls. If Bangladesh, Italy and Poland come back up, the 2024 drops were survey noise; if they hold, they are a story.

Whether the gains in Nigeria, Egypt and Viet Nam translate into usage. Ownership is the precondition. The next question is whether those new accounts carry payments.

And whether the median starts moving. A world figure rising on the strength of a few populous economies is a different market from one in which the typical country is gaining ground.