This service apparently launched in August but I missed it…better late than never. There have been a lot of stories about how the poor in Africa use mobile phones to improve their lives, often written in a fairly condescending tone, and even on Africans using mobile credit as money by buying prepaid cards and SMSing the number to someone. Now it appears the banks in South Africa have gotten into the act and launched a fully-fledged mobile banking service. This is not a credit card in a mobile phone or “pay-via-bill” or anything like that, from the reading it is an actual bank account. I haven’t come across this happening anywhere else in the world, which seems to put Africa at the forefront of technological innovation.
The interesting thing is that this will get people very used to the idea of using their mobiles for things other than communication. There’s still an uphill battle in many countries to educate the general population that mobile content such as games and video are better value than they may have thought…with Africans already doing banking on their mobile phone the switch to other content is not only easy, it’s obvious.
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