When people stayed outside the banking system, they couldn't access legitimate credit.
En medio de una pandemia que expuso con crudeza las fracturas estructurales de su economía, Perú aprobó en agosto de 2020 la cuenta DNI, una cuenta de ahorro digital gratuita vinculada al número de identidad nacional de cada ciudadano adulto. Lo que comenzó como una solución logística —evitar las aglomeraciones peligrosas de personas sin cuenta bancaria que acudían en persona a cobrar bonos de emergencia— reveló una exclusión financiera profunda y persistente: casi seis de cada diez adultos peruanos vivían completamente al margen del sistema formal. La medida abre una puerta, pero la historia de fondo —informalidad laboral, geografía hostil, préstamos usureros y analfabetismo financiero— recuerda que abrir una cuenta no es lo mismo que transformar una economía.
- La distribución de bonos pandémicos colapsó ante una realidad inocultable: cientos de miles de peruanos sin cuenta bancaria formaron filas físicas y peligrosas para cobrar su dinero en efectivo.
- El 60% de los adultos peruanos carecía de cualquier producto financiero formal, y en regiones del sur como Puno o Apurímac, menos de un tercio de la población tenía acceso a la banca.
- La brecha entre trabajadores formales e informales era abismal: el 80% de los primeros tenía cuenta bancaria frente a apenas el 26,5% de los segundos, atrapando a los más vulnerables en redes de crédito informal con tasas depredadoras.
- El gobierno respondió con la cuenta DNI, una cuenta de ahorro digital de apertura automática y gratuita a través del Banco de la Nación, diseñada para activarse sin necesidad de visitar una sucursal.
- Expertos advierten que la cuenta es solo el umbral: sin educación financiera, infraestructura en zonas remotas, interoperabilidad entre instituciones y productos verdaderamente accesibles, la inclusión seguirá siendo nominal.
Cuando Perú intentó distribuir bonos de emergencia en plena pandemia de 2020, el sistema bancario reveló su límite más doloroso: cientos de miles de ciudadanos sin cuenta alguna se presentaron en persona a cobrar su dinero, generando aglomeraciones peligrosas en medio de una crisis sanitaria. El problema no era nuevo, pero la urgencia lo volvió imposible de ignorar. Casi el 60% de los adultos peruanos no tenía ningún producto financiero formal —ni cuenta de ahorro, ni depósito a plazo, ni cuenta corriente.
El 20 de agosto de 2020, el gobierno aprobó la cuenta DNI: una cuenta de ahorro digital básica, gratuita y de apertura automática, gestionada por el Banco de la Nación y vinculada directamente al número de identidad nacional de cada ciudadano adulto. Sin necesidad de ir a una sucursal, sin trámites complejos. La lógica era simple: si las personas ya tenían una cuenta esperándolas, los próximos pagos de alivio podrían depositarse directamente, eliminando el cuello de botella físico.
Pero detrás de la solución inmediata había una fractura estructural de años. En las regiones del sur —Tacna, Cusco, Puno, Apurímac— menos de un tercio de los adultos tenía acceso a la banca formal. El 98% de las transacciones en esas zonas se realizaba en efectivo. Y la división entre trabajadores formales e informales era aún más pronunciada: mientras el 80% de los primeros contaba con una cuenta bancaria, apenas el 26,5% de los informales —la mayoría de la fuerza laboral en muchas regiones— podía decir lo mismo. Quienes quedaban fuera del sistema no solo carecían de acceso al crédito legítimo: dependían de prestamistas informales con tasas de interés que perpetuaban la pobreza en lugar de aliviarla.
Los expertos consultados coincidieron en que la cuenta DNI era un primer paso necesario, pero insuficiente por sí solo. Carolina Trivelli subrayó la importancia de la educación financiera; Martín Naranjo señaló los obstáculos geográficos e infraestructurales que encarecen la expansión bancaria en zonas remotas; Andrea Stiglich insistió en que los productos digitales deben ser genuinamente comprensibles para quienes nunca han usado la banca en línea. Abrir la puerta era indispensable. Lo que ocurra después de que la gente cruce el umbral determinará si esta política transforma algo real.
Peru's government faced a practical crisis in the middle of 2020. When it tried to distribute emergency pandemic relief payments to its citizens, the banks couldn't handle the volume. Hundreds of thousands of people without bank accounts showed up in person to collect their money, creating dangerous crowds during a health emergency. The root problem was stark: nearly six out of every ten Peruvian adults had no savings account, no fixed-term deposit, no checking account at all. On August 20th, the government approved a solution—the DNI account, a basic digital savings account that would be opened automatically and free of charge by the Banco de la Nación for every adult citizen, using identification data from the national registry.
The account itself was simple in design. It would be linked directly to a person's national ID number and could be activated through the bank's digital channels, no branch visit required. The hope was straightforward: if people had accounts already waiting for them, the next round of relief payments could be deposited directly, bypassing the physical bottleneck entirely. But the account was also meant to address something larger—a structural gap in Peru's economy that had persisted for years.
The numbers revealed how severe the exclusion was. Nationally, only 40 percent of adults had any kind of bank account. In the southern regions, the situation was worse. Moquegua and Arequipa, the better-served areas, still had fewer than half their adult populations in the banking system. In Tacna, Cusco, Puno, and Apurímac, less than a third of adults had any formal financial account. The divide between formal and informal workers was even starker. Among Peru's informal workforce—the vast majority of workers in many regions—only about one in four had a bank account. Formal workers, by contrast, had access at rates around 80 percent. Cash remained the only payment method most people knew. In the south, 98 percent of transactions happened in physical currency. Fewer than four percent of people used debit or credit cards. Less than one percent used internet banking.
This wasn't simply a matter of preference or habit. The informality of Peru's economy meant that most workers had no employer pushing them toward formal financial services, no payroll system that required a bank. But the consequences extended far beyond inconvenience. When people stayed outside the banking system, they couldn't access legitimate credit products. Instead, they borrowed from informal lenders—loan sharks operating in neighborhoods and markets—who charged interest rates that bore no relationship to what banks charged. Those predatory loans made it harder for families to escape poverty, harder to invest in education or small businesses, harder to build any kind of financial stability.
Experts who studied the problem identified multiple barriers. Carolina Trivelli, a former minister of social development, emphasized that financial education was essential—people needed to understand how to use these accounts and why they mattered. But the supply side was equally constrained. Martín Naranjo, president of the banking association, pointed out that Peru's geography and infrastructure gaps made it expensive and difficult to expand banking services into remote areas. The country's financial system was also fragmented, with poor interoperability between different institutions, making it harder for customers to move money or access services across providers. Andrea Stiglich, a strategic leader at Yape, a digital payments platform, stressed that any solution had to be genuinely user-friendly—not just technically available, but designed in ways that made sense to people who had never used digital banking before.
The DNI account was a necessary first step, but everyone involved understood it was only that. Opening an account automatically solved the immediate problem of distributing pandemic relief. But transforming Peru's financial system—bringing informal workers into the formal economy, reducing dependence on cash, breaking the cycle of predatory lending—would require sustained effort across multiple fronts. The account was the door. What happened after people walked through it would determine whether the policy actually changed anything.
Citações Notáveis
Financial education is essential for people to understand how to use these accounts and why they matter.— Carolina Trivelli, former minister of social development
Peru's geography and infrastructure gaps make it expensive and difficult to expand banking services into remote areas.— Martín Naranjo, president of the banking association
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why did the government wait until a pandemic to address this? Surely they knew most Peruvians didn't have bank accounts.
They probably did know, but it took a crisis to make it urgent. Distributing emergency money exposed the problem in real time—thousands of people crowding banks, the system breaking under the load. That's when you get political will to act.
So the DNI account is just a workaround for the relief payments, not a real solution to financial exclusion?
It's both. It solves the immediate logistical problem, but it also creates infrastructure for something bigger. Once people have accounts, the question becomes whether they'll actually use them, whether they'll trust the system, whether banks will offer them products worth using.
What's stopping someone in Puno from just withdrawing the money in cash the moment it arrives?
Nothing. That's the real challenge. You can open an account, but if someone has spent their whole life using cash, if they don't understand digital banking, if there's no reason to keep money in the account—they'll just empty it. That's why the experts kept talking about education and user-friendly design.
Is this about poverty or about infrastructure?
Both, but they're tangled together. A poor informal worker in a remote area has no reason to trust banks, no access to branches, no experience with formal finance. You can't separate the economics from the geography from the culture.
So did this actually work? Did people start using the accounts?
The article doesn't say. It's from September 2020, right after the policy was announced. We're looking at the moment of hope, before we know whether it changed anything.