We examine the impact of transaction failures on the working of a biometric-enabled payment system introduced in India to facilitate banking by the poor. On average, nearly one-third of transactions fail. However, the proportion of failures decline steeply with user experience. The usage of the...

We provide empirical evidence from India's PMJDY program, a “big bang” supply shock that gives bank accounts to virtually all of its 280 million unbanked. Proprietary data from individual bank account statements shows that there is significant uptake, usage, usage growth, and balance...

Having a bank account is widely regarded as the first step toward financial inclusion of the poor. Funds deposited in bank account are also observed to lead to higher savings. Exploiting special features of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) of India, our estimates indicate that...