7 It also found that the rates of mobile banking usage are higher among minorities. And even amongst the unbanked population, 40 percent of adults had access to a smartphone in their households; the same was true for 70 percent of underbanked adults. Another proxy used to gauge financial inclusion is access to credit.
When I worked on microcredit 3 decades ago, it was very difficult to scale up the provision of loans to small businesses.8 Reaching small enterprises and evaluating their creditworthiness was very expensive, especially in small cities and rural areas, and it was difficult to secure loans with collateral.