Mobile Money

Report

A Reuters report on research from microfinance policy centre CGAP forecast that the market for mobile financial services to poor people in emerging economies would grow from almost nothing to $5 billion by 2012, with telecoms operators potentially saving a further $2 billion from reduced customer turnover. The market traced its origins to Safaricom’s 2007 launch of M-PESA in Kenya, which had already attracted 6.5 million customers, roughly one in six Kenyans, and CGAP expected more than 120 mobile money services to be running in developing countries by the end of 2009, with services expanding from simple SMS cash transfers to paying for everything from taxi rides to utility bills, particularly significant in Africa, where only one in five people had a bank account.