Pakistan leads India and Bangladesh in Mobile Money Users

World Bank has revealed that Pakistan had the highest percentage of mobile money users in 2014, edging out other South Asian developing countries like India and Bangladesh by a decent margin.

The Global Findex, a comprehensive database of financial inclusion data managed by the World Bank, has revealed its figures for 2014 and Pakistan has managed to come on top in South Asia in the mobile money category. The number of people taking advantage of mobile money accounts in Pakistan was 5.8% of the total population, way above the South Asian average of 2.6%. Even in India, with its influx of startups and focus on technology and advancement, only a measly 2.4% population had mobile accounts while other South Asian countries like Bangladesh, Iran and Afghanistan had 2.7%, 4.5% and 0.3% mobile account holders out of the total population.

The figures were further broken down gender-wise, and it shows that a lot of work still needs to be done as there is a huge gap between the number of male and female users( 9% of men as compared to 2% of women moving money on their mobiles).

Pink represents the number of female mobile account holders and blue represents the number of male mobile account holders.

Pakistan has seen an incredible boom in terms of mobile money services like Telenor’s EasyPaisa and Mobilink’s MobiCash, both sporting more than half a million users each. These telecom-backed services have contributed hugely to making Pakistan a leader in mobile money.

The statistics are extracted from survey data collected by Gallup, Inc over the 2014 calendar year that covers around 150,000 adults in more than 140 economies and represents about 97% of the world’s population. The next survey will be done three years from now, in 2017.