This blog post was originally published on the Microfinance Gateway.
These are exciting times for those of us in the business of measuring financial inclusion. Technology is remaking the financial system every couple of years — and we're adapting the Global Findex survey questions accordingly. Our new data, which we're launching in April 2018, features bundles of new questions on financial services accessed through mobile phones and the internet.
We started collecting data for the first round of the World Bank's Global Findex database — measuring how adults in more than 140 countries worldwide save, borrow, and make payments — in 2010. Back then, our survey asked people about their use of paper checks.
Mobile money was so nascent that we had a few questions about mobile payments, but nothing about mobile money accounts. That came later, with the vastly expanded mobile money module in the 2014 Global Findex.