Diffusion of Banking Products in Financial Inclusion Linked Savings Accounts: A Case Study Based on Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana in India

The slow rate of adoption of savings and transaction accounts opened under financial inclusion programmes is a challenge for policymakers across the globe. We use the experience of a large-scale financial inclusion programme in India—Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY)—to model the adoption of simple banking products, namely deposit, withdrawal, fund transfer and ATM usage. Based on account-level transaction data, we create a dataset to capture the adoption of each product over time. We use this data to estimate three growth models: Bass, Gompertz and logistic. The Bass model which is based on diffusion of innovations theory is found to be the best fit across products. The role of social influence in the diffusion of the four products studied is found to be much lower when compared to other products in subsistence marketplaces. Social network effect is comparatively stronger in the adoption of fund transfer and ATM. We discuss the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon and contend that information transfer by word of mouth and network effects are the most probable reasons for the observed adoption behaviour.