Making Trust Affordable: Profile #2 Using Cell Phones to Extend the Reach of Financial Services

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.