« Thanks For The Love MobileMarketingRatings.com! | Main | The Mobile Marketing Association Reaches 700 Members »

February 17, 2009

Bill Gates Foundation To Bolster Mobile Banking In Emerging Markets

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a grant program that will have interesting effects in the mobile banking sector:

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has agreed to help fund a massive rollout of projects enabling poor mobile phone users to transfer money using their handsets, an industry body announced Tuesday.
...

"There's 1.7 billion people in the emerging markets who don't have a bank account but do have a mobile phone, so they could use their mobile phone to conduct financial transactions," explained Michael O'Hara, marketing director or the GSMA.

"The target is to reach 20 million additional unbanked people with the service by 2012," he added.

About 12 mobile phone banking programmes have been launched worldwide in the last few years, with about 10 million users benefiting so far.

The Gates Foundation said the grant was part of its programme to extend financial services to the poor who are often without access to a simple savings account.

Read more @ AFP.

Posted at 11:34:52 AM in Charity

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00e5528cee388833011278e02a9d28a4

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Bill Gates Foundation To Bolster Mobile Banking In Emerging Markets:

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by:  | 

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.