Mobile Phone Banking - Changing the way the Poor Bank

This video highlights the successful efforts of using cell phones to provide banking services to poor and low income households.  This effort has been led by the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) Program (a USAID-assist program with Chemonics International as the main contractor) and Globe Telecom's G-Xchange subisidary.  The program was recently selected by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation CGAP Technology grant as one of the nine shortlisted projects from around the world. Read more about the Technology program at http://cgap.org/portal/site/Technology/ and about the qualified projects at http://cgap.org/technology/docs/Round1ProjectDescrip.pdf.

Now with the support of the Gates Foundation and CGAP, the MABS program aims to build rural bank’s capacity to assimilate, implement, and market new mobile phone banking applications, as well as expand electronic payment and banking services for low income clients. The project aims to extend mobile phone banking services to 150,000 low-income Filipinos across the Philippines. The mobile phone banking applications which will utilize Globe Telecom’s G-Cash electronic money platform will convert mobile phones into “virtual wallets” for receiving and paying loans, depositing and withdrawing money, sending and receiving remittances, purchasing and selling goods and services and making bills payments. To date, MABS, GXI, and 38 rural banks have developed, tested, and rolled out three new mobile phone banking applications: the microloan repayment service, Text-A-Payment; the remote deposit-taking service, Text-A-Deposit; and the payroll service Text-A-Sweldo (Text-A-Salary).

CGAP technology expert Gautam Ivatury points out that, "…cell phones have become the first communications technology in history to have more users in poor countries than rich ones," a fact that is leading many in the banking industry to ask: "Why can't we bank the world's poor using the phones in their pockets?"