Who Gains from Digital Finance? Micro-Evidence on Account Ownership in Uzbekistan and Central Asia, 2021–2024

Uzbekistan raised adult account ownership from 44.1% to 59.7% between 2021 and 2024, during a rapid expansion of bank cards and payment applications. This study uses Global Findex microdata for Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan (about 6,000 respondents) to identify who gained and why. Weighted probit models show that education, not household income, is the main dividing line: tertiary education raises the probability of owning an account by 41.8 percentage points, whereas income quintiles have no significant effect. Women overtook men: the raw gender gap moved from −11.0 to +1.9 points, an adjusted change of 14.4 points (p = 0.005), while young adults fell further behind. Non-linear Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions show that only 20% of the 2021–2024 gain and 28% of the 27.3-point gap with Kazakhstan are explained by individual characteristics. Among account owners, only 15% save and 18% borrow formally. The remaining exclusion in Uzbekistan is therefore institutional and capability-based rather than income-based.