Digital Connectivity and Financial Inclusion: An Empirical Cross-Country Analysis Using the Global Findex 2025 Database

This study empirically explores the digital determinants of financial account ownership of 152 economies using the Global Findex Database 2025, which is the most recent cross-country repository on financial inclusion produced by the World Bank. By using ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions, together with descriptive, regional and bivariate analytical procedures, the authors examine the extent to which digital financial access, ownership of a mobile money account and the use of the internet predict financial account ownership at country level. The results show that digital financial access is the strongest and statistically significant determinant of financial account ownership in the world with a coefficient of 0.911 (p < 0.001), while the full model explains 76.7% of the cross-country variation in account ownership. Mobile money account ownership is added to the model with a negative and statistically significant coefficient of -0.236 (p = 0.006) indicating a substitution effect in economies where mobile money becomes the primary avenue to financial access in lieu of the traditional infrastructure of a banking sector. While internet usage is positively correlated with account ownership in bivariate tests, in the multivariate model, internet usage is not found statistically significant in driving financial inclusion without the presence of functioning digital financial infrastructure alongside with it. The regional analysis shows significant disparities in the results of financial inclusion. High income economies have an average account ownership rate of 92.03%, compared with 42.41% in the Middle East and North Africa and 55.60% in Sub-Saharan Africa. These results have some interesting implications for policymakers and development-finance institutions interested in designing inclusive digital financial ecosystems; they highlight the importance of investing in digital financial infrastructure in a targeted way rather than simply expanding internet access as a tool of financial inclusion. This study is the first cross-country empirical analysis of the factors driving digital financial inclusion based on the Global Findex 2025 dataset and offers timely and original evidence that can be relevant for policy formulation and practice concerning digital financial inclusion.