Mobile money: Getting to scale in emerging markets

More than a billion people in emerging and developing markets have cell phones but no bank accounts. Many low-income people store and transfer money using informal networks, but these have high transaction costs and are prone to theft. Mobile money is beginning to fill this gap by offering financial services over mobile phones, from simple person-to-person transfers to more complex banking services. To date, there have been more than 100 mobile-money deployments in emerging markets; at least 84 of them originated in the past three years

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Financial_Services/Banking/Mobile_money_Getting_to_scale_in_emerging_markets_2951