Khan Bank's Branch-and-Mobile Network: Digital Banking for Mongolia's Herders

Mongolia has the world's lowest population density and a large share of its roughly 3.3 million people still herd livestock. Khan Bank, the country's largest lender, built its branch network to follow that population: by the mid-2010s it operated around 530 branches reaching every province, district centre and official border point -- a density Oxford Business Group calculated at 69 bank branches per 100,000 people, far above South Korea (18), Russia (38) or China (8).

Khan Bank installed its first ATM outside the capital in 2007 and grew to over 300 ATMs nationwide within a few years, while launching mobile banking the same year. By 2023, Khan Bank reported that 99.4% of all its banking transactions were conducted digitally and that it served 2.9 million customers nationwide.

These figures come from the bank itself and financial-press reporting rather than an independent household survey of herders specifically, so they describe network reach and digital adoption at the institutional level, not a controlled evaluation of impact on herder incomes or welfare.