Report
Recently, a variety of initiatives have been launched around the globe which seek to use the mobile phone to provide financial services to the the unbanked. These services take a variety of forms – from long-distance remittances of large sums of money, to micropayments, to alternative currencies where the stored minutes (or credits) in a handset replace or augment cash holdings and transfers. Relatively little research has been conducted on the user-behaviors related to m-banking and m-payments systems in the developing world. This paper addresses some of the theoretical issues surrounding the use and impact of these systems.