16% Indians don't have active bank accounts despite high ownership rate: World Bank

On July 15, the finance ministry said about 1.4 lakh new Jan Dhan accounts have been opened in the past fortnight under the nationwide financial inclusion saturation campaign

The share of inactive bank accounts in India stands significantly high at 16 percent, which is in contrast to other low-and-middle income countries where the average stands at around 4 percent, a report by the World Bank said on July 16.

Moreover, despite government's efforts to bring more people into the financial system, India still has a large adult population without a bank account of their own, despite the country's 90 percent ownership rate, the report said.

"If India is excluded from the low- and middle-income average, the share of adults who do not have an active account falls to 3 percent, or 4 percent of account owners," according to the Global Findex Database 2025.

A family member owning an account and having not enough money were the top two factors for not having an account, the report that sheds light on connectivity and financial inclusion in the digital economy said. The other key reasons are not enough money, fees for financial services too high, financial institutions too far away, lack of trust and proper documentation, the report said.

However, in a positive development, the absolute number and the percentage of adults with an active account has rise in the country, with the gender gap decreasing from 12 percentage points to 7 between 2021 and 2024, the report said.

The drop in the gap could be because of the government-led initiatives to transfer benefits directly to accounts owned by women. In 2021, 59 percent women received government-to-person payments digitally compared to 81 percent in 2024.

Moreover, the share of both men and women with only inactive accounts fell between the above-mentioned period, the report showed.

On July 15, the finance ministry said about 1.4 lakh new Jan Dhan accounts have been opened in the past fortnight under the nationwide financial inclusion saturation campaign. Under the PM Jan Dhan Yojana, touted as the world's largest financial inclusion scheme, over 54.58 crore accounts have been opened since the launch of the initiative.

In terms of mobile phone ownership, the report said women are 8 percentage points less likely to own a handset compared to men around the world. A significant amount of the people without phones live in few economies including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the report said.

“Though there are some people without mobile phones in every economy in the world, a disproportionate share live in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (the only regions with mobile phone account ownership rates less than 85 percent), and particularly in large-population economies with lower-than-average connectivity rates, such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, and Pakistan,” it said.