Financial Inclusion and Remittances

Financial inclusion means having access to basic tools like a safe place to save, ways to send and receive payments, fair credit and loans, and simple methods to protect money and plan ahead. Many people are excluded because of no formal documents, distance from banks and ATMs, irregular income from informal work, lack of trust in institutions, and low financial education or poor digital access. When people are excluded, they often rely on risky or expensive alternatives: cash stored at home with loss and theft risk, informal lenders charging very high interest, high-fee money transfer services, and limited ways to build long-term savings. In El Salvador, international research has found that only about 36% of adults have an account at a financial institution. Bitcoin offers a different model: with a phone and internet connection, a person can hold value in a wallet they control, send and receive payments directly without asking a bank for permission, receive money from abroad without needing a bank account, and access a global financial network with open rules.