This chart displays data on account usage from our analysis of businesses in the first 4 countries we studied in the Small Firm Diaries—Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Indonesia.
Across these countries, we found that most of the small firms are “banked;” that is, the majority of firms in every country had a bank account and used it at least once. But far fewer used that account for the majority of their transactions. Instead, most firm owners still rely heavily on cash.
While many firm owners told us they personally used digital financial services (DFS) like mobile money, credit cards, ATMs, and POS agents, we didn’t see these services showing up very frequently in their transactions. Looking at figures for mobile money for instance, frequent usage was under 5% of firms in all countries except for Kenya.