Gates Foundation Fund Mobile Banking

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $12.5m to help extend basic banking services to the estimated one billion people worldwide who own a mobile phone but have no bank account, working with the mobile industry to reach customers that traditional banks are unable or unwilling to serve. The foundation earmarked funding for 20 projects across Africa, Asia and Latin America, framing mobile banking as vital to economic progress for the poor, while GSMA chief executive Rob Conway pointed to McKinsey research suggesting the market for mobile money among the unbanked could reach $5bn within three years, citing the early success of Kenya’s Vodafone- and Safaricom-backed M-Pesa, which by then relied on a network of more than 7,000 agent shops to handle deposits and withdrawals.