-3however, lower-income and minority households have substantially higher rates of being unbanked. The widespread adoption of mobile phones and the data they generate are expected to extend these gains even further.
The World Bank noted, for instance, that about 1.1 billion unbanked people, about two-thirds of the unbanked population, has a mobile phone.6 Here in the United States, the Federal Reserve Board’s 2015 Survey of Consumers’ Use of Mobile Financial Services found that nearly 60 percent of the U.S. adult population had a smart (internet-enabled) phone.