About two in three Bangladeshi adults now have access to some form of formal financial service, according to Bangladesh Bank’s Financial Inclusion Report 2025. The central bank puts the figure at 64.5% of adults. But the same report shows that the gains are lopsided: digital channels are racing ahead, while the small savings schemes built for the country’s poorest savers are losing ground.
The report covers developments across banking, mobile financial services (MFS), microfinance, the capital market and insurance over 2024 and 2025. The central bank itself describes progress as uneven.
Phones and agents carry the growth
Mobile money is the clearest winner. MFS transactions rose 31.35% to 9.57 billion in 2025, and the value moved through wallets climbed 25.58% to Tk21.83 lakh crore, up from Tk17.38 lakh crore a year earlier. Registered MFS accounts reached 25.02 crore by the end of 2025, of which 10.56 crore are held by women.
Registered accounts are not the same as active users, and many people hold more than one wallet, so the account total is far higher than the adult population. Still, the direction is plain. Merchant payments grew, and utility bill payments for gas and electricity rose by more than 15%. Government-to-person payments, such as allowances and stipends sent through wallets, were the one MFS line that fell, down 5.36%.
Agent banking tells a similar story of deeper use rather than wider reach. The number of agent outlets fell 3.5% to 20,501, yet customers rose 7.2% to 2.58 crore. Deposits through agents grew 19% to Tk49,720 crore, and loans disbursed through the channel jumped 46% to Tk35,023 crore. Private commercial banks led the expansion.
The weaker numbers sit in the accounts designed to pull people into banking in the first place. School banking accounts rose 8.57% to 47.55 lakh, from 43.80 lakh, but deposits in them fell 3.69% to Tk1,994 crore. More than half of these student accounts, 52.24%, are in rural areas, yet urban accounts hold 70.29% of the money.
The Tk10 accounts opened for marginal farmers shrank on both counts. Account holders fell 6.28% to 92.57 lakh, and deposits fell 8.77% to Tk819 crore from Tk898 crore. No-frills accounts did slightly better, with deposits up 1.26% to Tk9,328 crore, helped by social safety net beneficiaries and people in extreme poverty.
The report does not explain the decline in detail, but the pattern suggests that households under financial pressure are drawing down small savings even as they use digital payments more often.
What it means here
For fintech firms, banks and wallet operators, the data confirms that the payment habit is now well established. The harder problem is turning frequent transactions into savings, credit and insurance that people actually keep. Mobile wallets move money quickly, but a falling balance in a farmer’s Tk10 account is a reminder that access alone does not build financial resilience.
The gap between rural account numbers and urban deposits also points to where product design matters most. Low-cost savings tools inside wallets, small loans priced for seasonal incomes, and agent networks that do more than cash-in and cash-out are the likely next test. With Bangladesh Bank also pushing interoperability between banks and wallets, the coming year will show whether the country’s digital rails can carry more than everyday payments.
