Economic Empowerment through Mobile
Vodafone, November 10, 2006
The potential for mobile banking to assist people on low-income is enormous. The Report begins with a summary of a recently released study titled ‘Mobile phone banking and lowincome
customers: Evidence from South Africa’. The study shows that poor people in South Africa are using mobile banking services and value them highly. It also identifies the challenges in bringing mobile banking to more poor consumers, including the need to better understand poor people’s perceptions of banking,
technology and mobile-banking.
The second paper tries to understand the social and economic benefits of a specific product, Airtime Transfer, which has been widely available and used in Egypt since September 2004. The
key learning from this was that, in addition to the economic benefit that ‘sharing’ airtime brings, the social benefit is
also considerable, particularly for families, which are often separated for economic reasons, and who might otherwise
be unable to keep in touch.
The last chapter outlines the variety of ways that mobile telephones are currently being used to deliver different types of financial services, including mobile purchasing, electronic money and electronic banking. This report explores ways in which traditional business models are being challenged and outlines
the commercial opportunities presented by servicing the base-of-the-pyramid market.
>> View Article | created on: 11/10/2006
