79% of Adults Now Have a Financial Account. A New Book Asks Why 1.3 Billion Still Don't
The World Bank's Global Findex Database 2025, based on a 2024 survey of more than 145,000 adults across 141 economies, found that 79 percent of adults worldwide now hold a financial account, up from 74 percent in 2021 — yet 1.3 billion adults remain unbanked, more than half of them concentrated in just eight countries. Mobile money has driven much of the recent gain: 15 percent of adults globally now hold a mobile money account, and in developing economies, mobile money savings use has risen five percentage points since 2021. The headline number is encouraging. The harder question is why access still does not translate evenly into genuine financial inclusion.
That is the question the newly published Digital Human Finance: Exploring Embeddedness, Inclusion and Social Realities (Anette Broløs, Erin B. Taylor, Jillet Sarah Sam, and Shriram Venkatraman, Edward Elgar Publishing) sets out to answer. Rather than treating account ownership or app adoption as the finish line, the authors examine digital financial tools — from mobile banking to AI-based fintech — as social and cultural instruments whose outcomes depend on existing hierarchies, trust, and household dynamics, not on technology specifications alone.
The book's practical value shows up in three areas. First, its chapters on trust in digital financial systems give fintech product teams a framework for understanding adoption barriers that survey data alone cannot explain. Second, its treatment of household financial relations and digital gift-giving offers development economists concrete case material for designing inclusion programs that account for intra-household power dynamics, a factor the Findex headline figures do not capture. Third, its closing chapters on digital savings behaviour — from mobile piggybanks to virtual portfolios — speak directly to the mobile money savings trend the World Bank data documents.
For libraries building collections in development economics, economic sociology, or fintech policy, this book pairs a rigorous interdisciplinary method with the kind of grounded, cross-cultural evidence that purely technical or purely economic titles on financial inclusion typically lack.
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Q&A
What does Digital Human Finance argue about financial inclusion?
It argues that digital financial inclusion outcomes depend on social hierarchies, trust, and cultural context, not on technology adoption metrics alone.
How does the book relate to the World Bank's Global Findex 2025 findings?
It offers the qualitative, cross-cultural explanation behind headline account-ownership and mobile money statistics, examining why access does not always translate into genuine inclusion.
Who are the authors of Digital Human Finance?
Anette Broløs and Erin B. Taylor of Finthropology, Jillet Sarah Sam of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and Shriram Venkatraman of the University of Southern Denmark.
Who should read this book?
Policymakers and regulators working on financial inclusion, fintech product and policy teams, development economists, and academic libraries in economics, sociology, and development studies.
Where can I order Digital Human Finance?
Through CLNZ Books, with worldwide shipping and institutional invoicing available on request.