In parts of Africa, only one in five people have access to traditional banking services. In Latin America only one in three do. Claire Alexandre, Ignacio Mas, and Daniel Radcliffe of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation say this need not be the case. The technology exists to make banking...

M-PESA is a small-value electronic payment and store of value system that is accessible from ordinary mobile phones. It has seen exceptional growth since its introduction by mobile phone operator Safaricom in Kenya in March 2007: it has already been adopted by 14 million customers (corresponding...

This paper reviews the relevance of formal financial services – in particular, savings – to poor people, the economic factors that have hindered the mass-scale delivery of such services in developing countries, and the technology-based opportunities that exist today to make massive...