
Mobile financial services would increase emerging economies' GDP by $3.7T - prostoalex
http://qz.com/787137/developing-nations-would-be-3-7-trillion-richer-if-more-people-could-handle-their-finances-from-their-mobile-phones-instead-of-going-to-the-bank/
======
lifeisstillgood
I am trying to envisage the different possible ways new banking services can
emerge. Can we ever expect a crypto currency to work? Or are we forever
reliant on trusting third parties (ie banks)?

Having mobile banking services is possible of course but actual banking
services are more than tracking my latte spend. The guy who founded Bank Of
America walked into San Francisco the day after 1906 earthquake with a
wheelbarrow of cash and started lending to the shop and business owners who
needed to rebuild immediately.

That's the kind of banking service Africa will need in the next few decades,
and New York or London or SV are not planning on an app that can do that.

So the consumer banking apps, they will come, but a banking infrastructure,
funnelling loans into real businesses and infrastructure - that's a different
kind of banking. One it seems we forget.

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contingencies
It was my understanding that Google banned non-Google in-app payments from the
Play store. This has certainly stifled a lot of innovation, and basically
leaves pre-loading and side-loading as valid distribution methods, neither of
which are ideal. Historically I think that was partly to remove carrier
billing as an option (Google and device manufacturers wanted to 'own the
customer' instead of letting the carrier do it, which is traditional in the
US). I know this as I am one of the few people in the world who has written an
from-scratch in-app payment solution for Android that was actually widely
deployed (US carrier-billing for T-Mobile and AT&T via a pre-loaded app on
intial generation Samsung Galaxy series devices). Here in China, Google Play
is blocked, there are at least five different app markets that come pre-
installed on various vendors' phones, and we mostly all use WeChat payment and
just routinely download APKs from the browser. It is normal for browser-
downloaded APKs not to request permissions though. whereas fintech stuff well
written may need quite a few permissions. I suspect Google has already made
this hard.

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executesorder66
... if more people could handle their finances from their mobile phones

is the rest of the title.

Also, the bank I work for allows mobile banking for 11 countries in Africa.
11/54 is not bad if you ask me.

~~~
patmcguire
Reminds me of the Onion headline, "New Study Finds Blacks More Likely"
[http://www.theonion.com/article/new-study-finds-blacks-
more-...](http://www.theonion.com/article/new-study-finds-blacks-more-
likely-18552)

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ekpyrotic
I'm one of the organisers of the FinTech For Good Summit in London (more info:
[http://fintechforgoodsummit.com/](http://fintechforgoodsummit.com/)).

If this topic is interesting to you and it is a discussion you want to get
involved in, please do email me on j@greenaway.me. All welcome!

We are building a powerful group of people to advocate for the transformative
impact of FinTech in developing economies, and we'd love to start a
conversation with you too.

