Financial Inclusion: Global Findex 2025 Account Ownership, Gender Gap and India's Jan Dhan

Financial inclusion here means adults owning an account at a bank, other financial institution or mobile money provider. The main global source is the World Bank Global Findex Database 2025, based on surveys of about 148,000 adults in 141 economies during calendar year 2024 [4].

In 2024, 79% of adults worldwide had an account [1]. That is up from 74% in 2021 and 51% in 2011 [3]. About 1.3 billion adults still had no account, as reported by BIIA from the Findex 2025 [2].

• Sub-Saharan Africa: account ownership rose to 58% in 2024 from 49% in 2021, and the region remains the global leader in mobile money use [2].
• Middle East and North Africa: account ownership rose to 53% from 45% in 2021, while formal saving reached 17% [2].
• South Asia: nearly 80% of adults now have an account [2].
• India: 90% of both men and women hold accounts, and 65% own a mobile phone [2].

Between 2021 and 2024, account ownership grew by 11 percentage points in low-income economies and by 8 percentage points in lower middle-income economies [3].

Globally, 77% of women had an account in 2024, compared with 81% of men, a gap of 4 percentage points (FREEE.REPORT calculation) [2].

In low- and middle-income economies, women's account ownership nearly doubled over the past decade, from 37% in 2011 to 73% in 2024 [2]. The report credits digital money with helping to narrow the gap [2].

India's national financial inclusion scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), had 58.63 crore accounts with a deposit balance of Rs 3,08,333 crore as of 1 July 2026 [5]. Of these, 32.68 crore accounts (55.74%) belong to women and about 45.62 crore (77.80%) were opened in rural and semi-urban areas [5].

As of 25 February 2026, the count stood at 57.78 crore accounts with deposits of Rs 2,94,702 crore [6]. That means about 0.85 crore accounts were added in just over four months (FREEE.REPORT calculation).

• Large unbanked population: about 1.3 billion adults remained without an account [2].
• Education gap in phone access: phone ownership is 75% among adults with primary education or less, against 93% among those with secondary education or more [2].
• Financial resilience: only 56% of adults globally could reliably access extra money in an emergency [1].

Global figures come from the World Bank Global Findex Database 2025 [1][4]. Regional, gender and unbanked figures are as reported by BIIA in its coverage of the World Bank report [2]; 2011 and 2021 comparison values and income-group changes come from Visa Economic Empowerment Institute's summary of the Findex 2025 [3]. Findex survey data refer to calendar year 2024.

India PMJDY figures come from Ministry of Finance releases published by the Press Information Bureau [5][6]. One crore equals 10 million. Deposit values are in Indian rupees.

FREEE.REPORT calculations: the gender gap is 81% minus 77%. PMJDY accounts added between 25 February 2026 and 1 July 2026 are 58.63 crore minus 57.78 crore.