Title: Regulatory Issues Around Mobile Banking: New initiatives to bank the poor are straining the world’s financial regulatory systems.
Author: Paul Makin
Pages: 14 pp.
Source: Workshop on “Policy coherence in the application of information and communication technologies for development"
Publisher: OECD, World Bank
Date (published): 01/09/2009
Date (accessed): 05/10/2009
Type of information: conference paper, draft
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs estimates that in Africa there are 300 million reachable adults with no current access to formal financial services, and there are a variety of mobile services springing up to address their needs. Rather than true mobile
banking, most of these initiatives offer a subset of banking, though with the aim of evolving towards full banking services in the future, and are variously known as “branchless banking”, “2G (second generation) banking”, “mobile payments”, “mobile money transfer” or “mobile banking” – which term is used depends on the audience...
Many of the mobile initiatives are partially – in some cases wholly – led by non-bank organisations that are traditionally outside the scope of financial regulation, and with whom the financial regulator has traditionally had little or no contact. This has naturally led to concern amongst regulators, and, for good or bad, threatens to disrupt the regulation of the financial sector in many of these countries.

Report for Joint Workshop on “Policy coherence in the application of information and communication technologies for development,” organized by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Information for Development Program (infoDev), World Bank, 10-11 September 2009, Paris, France