Making Trust Affordable: Profile #2 Using Cell Phones to Extend the Reach of Financial Services
20 Pages Posted: 17 Feb 2014
Date Written: August 1, 2010
Abstract
Exclusion from financial services has an economic impact that can exacerbate poverty. In the past three years — prompted by the dramatic increase in the use of mobile phones and other information and communications technologies in developing countries — telecommunications companies, traditional financial institutions, and third parties have sought new ways to extend financial services to the billions around the world who remain unbanked. As a result, millions of the previously unbanked have successfully "leapfrogged" over the ATM- and branch-based customer service model that is the norm in the developed world.
Keywords: technology, innovation, mobile, development, M-PESA
JEL Classification: 010, 011, 030, 031, 033
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation