Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Development Impact of Mobile Banking

exhibitIt isn't often that some communications application or service can clearly be seen as having enormous social or development impact, in a way that normal people can grasp.

Consider the area of international remittances. Worldwide, some 200 million migrant workers send more than $300 billion a year to their relatives in their home countries.

For some nations, the remittance sums exceed their foreign direct-investment totals. One can question the impact of the hundreds of billions in government and non-governmental aid over the past 60 or so years. It is easy to understand the impact of family members sending money "back home."

Sure, economists can calculate the benefit of just about any type of economic activity. But such estimates often fail to capture benefit in a way an average person can understand. Mobile banking in developing nations is the exception to the rule.

The average cost of sending money across borders is currently about nine percent, which gives mobile-money platforms a vast opportunity to reduce these costs, which leaves more money in the pockets of the recipients and the wage earners.

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