Our Views

Financial inclusion has moved from a development slogan to a constraint on growth and state capacity. When women remain outside formal finance, governments pay more to deliver transfers, firms lose customers, and households absorb shocks in cash. Global Findex 2025 shows near-universal momentum, with almost 80% of adults worldwide holding an account, yet 1.3 billion adults remain unbanked and the remaining gap is increasingly concentrated where systems are weakest.

For decision-makers, the policy question has changed. The issue is no longer opening accounts; it is whether women can use them safely, frequently, and on fair terms. In low- and middle-income countries, women’s account ownership reached 73% in 2024, nearly doubling from 2011, but usage and agency still lag where connectivity, identification, distribution, and consumer protection are brittle.

That has investment implications. Payments rails, digital identity, and basic consumer safeguards are becoming economic infrastructure, not “financial sector projects.” If women are excluded by design, digitization scales inequality faster than it scales opportunity. The best strategies now treat women’s inclusion as an operating model problem that spans regulation, telecoms, product design, and local delivery.

From access to agency: why usage is the real metric

The latest Findex cycle is clear that behavior, not registration, is where value is created. In low- and middle-income economies, more women are using accounts to save formally (36% in 2024, up from 22% in 2021) and to make or receive digital payments (58% in 2024, up from 50%), including digital merchant payments. This is the shift from “paper inclusion” to transactional utility.

But the remaining gap is sticky because it is structural. Findex highlights persistent reasons women stay unbanked, including affordability, limited funds, and reliance on a family member’s account. A household may be “included” while women’s control over money remains constrained. That difference matters for resilience, business formalization, and the ability to accumulate assets over time.

Usage also exposes trade-offs that policy often avoids. Digitizing government payments can drive uptake, but if fees, cash-out friction, or weak agent liquidity make accounts costly to use, women rationally revert to cash. Inclusion is not a one-off onboarding event; it is a daily experience shaped by local market structure.

Digital connectivity is now the binding constraint

In many markets, the fastest path to narrowing the gender gap is mobile-first distribution. Yet connectivity is not neutral. GSMA’s latest data shows women in low- and middle-income countries are still less likely than men to use mobile internet, leaving hundreds of millions unconnected. If financial services become “digital by default,” exclusion becomes structural.

That is why the inclusion agenda increasingly resembles a digital public infrastructure agenda. Affordable devices, mobile internet access, and trusted agent networks are not ancillary. They are the cost base of scale. Without them, providers face higher acquisition costs, governments face leakage and exclusion in transfers, and investors face growth ceilings that no marketing budget can fix.

Connectivity also introduces new risk. Global Findex 2025 points to security gaps in mobile usage, noting that many phone owners do not use passwords, even as transactions shift onto devices. Trust collapses quickly when fraud becomes a normal cost of using finance.

Identity and compliance: the quiet exclusions that undermine scale

Even when women want accounts and have connectivity, they may still be blocked by documentation and onboarding rules. The constraint is not just “ID coverage,” but the operational burden of proving identity under compliance regimes that were built for higher-value customers. When KYC is designed for banks, low-income women pay the price in time, travel, and rejected applications.

Regulators have room to act without weakening integrity. FATF’s guidance emphasizes that an overly cautious AML/CFT posture can exclude legitimate consumers, and it supports risk-based approaches and simplified customer due diligence for lower-risk situations. Proportional compliance is not deregulation; it is smarter risk allocation.

The implementation reality is just as important as the rulebook. World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2024 highlights large gaps between laws on paper and the systems needed for enforcement. Inclusion commitments are only credible when institutions can execute them.

Consumer protection is no longer optional

As usage rises, the downside risks move to the center. Digital credit and embedded finance can expand access to working capital, but they can also scale overindebtedness, mis-selling, data misuse, and weak redress mechanisms. CGAP’s 2025 guide on responsible digital credit documents practical solutions across the customer journey to manage these risks. Inclusion that creates avoidable harm will not survive regulatory or political scrutiny.

This is where investors should update their diligence logic. Growth projections based on onboarding are fragile if they do not account for complaint resolution, transparency of fees, and fraud exposure. Trust is an operational KPI, not a branding exercise. When trust fails, women exit first because the opportunity cost of “learning by losing money” is higher in cash-constrained households.

Well-designed consumer protection also improves market efficiency. Clear disclosure standards, dispute resolution, agent accountability, and supervision of digital lenders reduce churn and stabilize deposit behavior. A safer system is a more investable system.

The hard part is the political economy, not the product

Many barriers sit outside finance ministries and central banks. Gender norms shape phone ownership, mobility, and control over income, and they also shape the behavior of providers and regulators. CGAP’s work on “invisible barriers” shows how norms operate across households, communities, providers, and authorities, reinforcing exclusion through everyday assumptions. If the operating environment is ignored, product innovation will not scale.

That is why the most effective strategies look less like campaigns and more like coordinated delivery programs. Payments digitization, tiered KYC, agent network expansion, and women-centered product design must move together, or bottlenecks simply migrate from one layer to another. Coordination is the scarce resource.

For governments, the credibility test is whether the plan survives political cycles. If benefits are visible, leakage is contained, and consumer harm is managed, programs endure. When inclusion is engineered as governance-by-design, it is harder to unwind and easier to finance.

At Aninver, we treat women’s financial inclusion as a delivery challenge built on real constraints: connectivity, onboarding rules, market incentives, and consumer safety. That lens comes from work where gender outcomes depend on execution quality, including AfDB’s Fashionomics platform (born from a feasibility study and built as a practical digital market tool for entrepreneurs) and World Bank programs that strengthen women-led MSMEs through targeted digital capability building.

For readers who want to explore relevant references quickly, here are a few Aninver projects directly connected to women’s economic participation, digital platforms, and ecosystem building:

• Fashionomics Africa Initiative (AfDB; platform content, stakeholder database, and outreach with a focus on women and youth).
• Feasibility study for the development of the Fashionomics Online Platform (AfDB; market and user research to design an interactive online marketplace).
• Training of MSMEs in the tourism sector on digital technologies and innovation in The Gambia (World Bank / We-Fi; digital skills for women-owned MSMEs).
• Technical Assistance for Women’s Groups in the Henna and Date Value Chains in the Mauritanian Desert (World Bank / We-Fi; support to women producer networks, including digital tools).
• Assessment of Digital Receivables Financing (DRF) in Côte d’Ivoire (World Bank / IFC; enabling infrastructure and constraints for scalable digital financing models).