The March Towards Digital Money:Bringing The Underbanked In FromThe Cold

The 2017 Index represents more of a shuffling than shifting of countries in their comparative readiness to embrace digital money. Overall,there has not been significant movement across categories. Rather, it’s been a story of small movement within the higher clusters and significant fluctuation within the lower ones. Consistent with last year’s findings, the research suggests that countries at the top are making more progress in improving their digital money environment than those at the lower end. The Index shows that the average improvement in score over the past three years was highest for countries at the top — at 3% in the Materially Ready cluster and 4%among those in the In-Transition cluster — and just 0.5% at the bottom (Incipient cluster).