According to the World Bank's Global Findex database, about 1.7 billion adults were unbanked in 2017, which means that they lacked an account with a formal financial institution or a mobile money provider. Most of the unbanked population is in developing countries. In South Sudan, for instance, only 9% of the adults had a bank account. Similarly, about 70% of the population in Latin America is unbanked or underbanked (Rojas-Torres, Kshetri, Hanafi, andKouki, 2021). Likewise, according to the International Finance Corporation, over 200 million small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries lack access to financial services.
