The paper reviews the relevance of formal financial services - and 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 gains in...

This paper examines how banks can translate the potential of mobile phones into greater financial access for poor people. Although mobile phone operators have been able to use the mobile phone for mobile remittance and bill payment services in several countries, banks have had little success in...

This paper presents ten key service design features that have facilitated the rapid adoption and active use of M-PESA in Kenya. These relate to branding and messaging, ease of use, consistency of customer experience, agent monitoring, instantaneous customer registration, free deposits, ability...