Mobile money seen as chance for world's poorest

Mobile banking has potential to expand microfinance beyond the limits that the current Grameen model is bound by. While the Grameen model has been able to reach an estimated 100 million people through institutional microfinance, it is predicted that mobile banking could reach almost four times that many people.

Reuters recently published an article about Mobile Banking that is worth checking out. Here is a quick quote from the article which gives you a little context on the possibilities of mobile banking.

"The Grameen Bank model works, but the scalability is limited. The problem is about the inertia of money. It is very difficult to move very small amounts of money fast," said Hannes van Rensburg, chief executive of mobile financial services provider Fundamo. Currently, about 3.5 billion people, more than half the world's population, have no access to banking services. However, 1 billion of those people do have mobile phones and the GSMA sees that figure rising to 1.7 billion by 2012.