Why Owning a Bank Account Is Only the First Step in Financial Inclusion

The World Bank's Global Findex Database 2025 reports that 79% of adults worldwide now have an account. It also reports that 40% of adults in developing economies saved in a financial account in 2024, a rise of 16 percentage points since 2021.

Those are strong headline numbers, and they measure one thing well. An account counts as owned once it is opened, whether or not its holder deposits, withdraws or pays a bill through it in the following year. The distance between owning an account and using one is where much of the remaining work in financial inclusion lies.

India shows how account creation gets ahead of account usage

India offers the clearest case. The Findex 2025 figure list shows that 16 percent of account owners in India have inactive accounts, compared with an average of 4 percent across other low and middle income economies.

The same data shows that the share of Indian women and men holding only inactive accounts went down between 2021 and 2024. That is progress, though the gap with other economies remains wide.

For African policymakers, the Indian figures are a useful warning about targets. A campaign that counts new accounts can meet its goal while a large share of those accounts records no transactions at all.

Many accounts are opened to receive one kind of payment

Findex also records why people open accounts in the first place. Between one third and two thirds of adults with a bank or similar account opened it to receive a government payment or a wage.

More than half of government to person payment recipients in every region were paid digitally, and half of private sector wage earners in low and middle income economies were paid the same way. An account opened for one incoming payment can stay in use for that purpose alone, with the money withdrawn as soon as it arrives.

Saving shows a similar pattern. In most regions, about 10 percent of adults saved formally and earned interest, a much smaller group than the 79% who own an account.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, use depends on security and recourse

Two Findex findings for Sub-Saharan Africa describe what stands between an account holder and regular use. About half of mobile money account owners in the region have a password on their phone. Only half of the owners who sent money to the wrong person got it back.

Both figures describe protection that an account holder relies on long after the account is opened, from locking a phone to getting a mistaken payment reversed. Neither is settled at sign up.

The same data shows the other side of the picture. Mobile money owners in the region had more frequent outflows than inflows, and mobile money savers saved more often than bank account savers, which points to accounts in daily use.

A Nigerian field study shows the gap on the first day

Nigeria offers a closer look at what happens after a customer signs up at a branch.

Researchers from the Liners review platform, the home of African software, logged 100 visits to branches of 18 traditional banks in Lagos, Ibadan, Ogun and Ondo in 2026. They also opened accounts through five banking apps for comparison.

The results record how much of a working account was in place when each customer walked out. The account opening research sets out, bank by bank, which services worked on day one and which ones were left for later.

Three figures from the branch visits relate directly to use:

• 22 of the 100 visits ended with the bank's mobile app running.
• 18 ended with USSD banking working, the channel that serves customers without smartphones or data.
• 23 included any warning about fraud.

The researchers describe the work as a field study and not a representative survey, so the figures show patterns at the branches visited. They match the Findex findings on security and recourse. A customer who leaves without app or USSD access, and without guidance on fraud, holds an account with few safe ways to use it.

What counting active bank accounts would change

The headline Findex figure is an ownership figure. Adding a measure of accounts used in the past year, and of the channels customers can reach on the day they open, would show regulators where onboarding ends too early.

For Nigeria, that would mean tracking whether new customers leave a branch with USSD or app access, and whether they are told how to report a mistaken or fraudulent transfer. In the Liners study, fewer than a quarter of branch visits ended with the app running, and fewer than a quarter included any fraud warning.

The same approach would suit government transfer programmes. Where a social payment is the reason an account was opened, the agency sending the money is well placed to report whether recipients use that account for anything else, such as saving, paying bills or receiving money from family.

Findex shows India's share of adults holding only inactive accounts going down since 2021. African regulators now have the ownership figures and the early field evidence, and the next round of inclusion reporting is the place to start counting the accounts people use.