WASHINGTON, DC – The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred financial inclusion, driving a large increase in digital payments amid the expansion of formal financial services, according to the Global Findex 2021 database.
Image courtesy of OECSLatin America and the Caribbean saw an 18 percent increase in account ownership since 2017, the largest of any developing world region, resulting in 73 percent of adults having an account, according to the World Bank-produced database, which surveyed how people in 123 economies use financial services throughout 2021.
It said digital payments play a key role, as 40 percent of adults in the region paid a merchant digitally, including 14 percent of adults who did so for the first time during the pandemic.
COVID-19 further drove digital adoption for the 15 percent of adults who made their first utility bill payment directly from their account for the first time during the pandemic—more than twice the developing country average.
“Opportunities for even greater use of digital payments remain given that 150 million banked adults made merchant payments only in cash,” stated the report
Overall, as of 2021, 76 percent of adults globally now have an account at a bank, other financial institution, or with a mobile money provider, up from 68 percent in 2017 and 51 percent in 2011.
“The digital revolution has catalyzed increases in the access and use of financial services across the world, transforming ways in which people make and receive payments, borrow, and save,” said World Bank Group President David Malpass.
“Creating an enabling policy environment, promoting the digitalization of payments, and further broadening access to formal accounts and financial services among women and the poor are some of the policy priorities to mitigate the reversals in development from the ongoing overlapping crises.”
For the first time since the Global Findex database was started in 2011, the survey found that the gender gap in account ownership has narrowed, helping women have more privacy, security, and control over their money. The gap narrowed from 7 to 4 percent globally and from 9 to 6 percent in low- and middle-income countries, since the last survey round in 2017.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, women are 7 percent less likely than men to have an account.
