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It's a system that it's all based into credit cards, debit cards.

You park a car, you need to have a credit card.

Having a bank account is crucial to participating in society.

If we don't have one, we often can't get paid or pay our bills. It keeps our money safe, it earns us interest, and it allows us to borrow money. Yet around the world, 1.4 billion people

don't have access to one. There's so much distrust when it comes to the banking system in Zimbabwe

that you can literally just wake up and

banks will be closed. I'm Sam Fenwick and today on Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm going

to be finding out what the barriers are to opening a bank account and what solutions entrepreneurs

are coming up with to aid greater financial inclusion.

We came from Colombia.

I was younger back then, but I totally remember coming here with my parents

and how difficult was to open a bank account.

When everything in the United States is through a bank, through a

credit card, so definitely it was a big struggle and it was not the nicest thing.

Maria Rincon recalls arriving in the United States as a small girl.

We came through the right routes and everything and having that issue of opening a banking

account, it was kind of like, it puts you to a little group like a side separate from the real world.

When you're an immigrant, you face so many things. And I was little, but I totally remember the whole thing about, oh, no, you need this paper where you don't have a social security yet.

You need to bring this, this and that.

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