Banking for the poor... for the poor, actually they can keep their cash under the mat they sleep in or go dig a hole in the ground somewhere and bury it till the next crisis.. lower transaction cost..

M-pesa allows anyone with a mobile phone to recieve money from a Safaricom customer. In a country where most people don't have a bank account this has become the default bank payment system. It started 15 months ago and currently carries €200 million per month. That's 5% of its GDP. There is a cost involved, at 25-35 eurocents per transaction it is not cheap, but it is still appreciated (by the people, not by competing banks)

and I need more talktime. I have $50,000,000,000 in a Swiss bank account. Vodafricafone will not accept Swiss Francs. If you can set up a direct debit from your account of $40/month then in return I can setup a direct debit from my account into yours of 100 CHF (Swiss Francs). This is over 50% more you will earn each month.

Most African's I see on tv have cars, live in cities, shop at supermarkets, have machine guns and RPGs and hang out on the back of pickup trucks, or beside their local Shell pipeline running outside their back door.

Or they drive nice fast speedboats, also while carrying mahcine guns, RPG's, and climbing rope for getting on board slow moving oil tankers and cargo ships.

Those African dudes can probably afford more air time than half of us!

When is Alan Greenspan going to be prosecuted for causing a world wide recession due to putting up US borrowing costs by 300% in a couple of years?

;-)

Look at the current financial crisis, created by these greedy, fat cat, faithless bankers. And now everyone is suffering while they still get their giant bonuses - on top of their lavish, rich lifestyle including their mansion with no mortgages or any debts at all.
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I admire Bill Gates but he needs to think twice as not everyone is as charitable as he is. People everywhere - regardless of race or colour will try and cheat and oppress others and rob 'em blind, only to satisfy their greed!

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I say, whatever system we have here in the west, we should keep our sh*t to ourself and leave these illiterate people as they have been all this time. Seems to have been well enough up to now, so why bother - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There might be more harm done than good.

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I think morally rich people should look after the poor instead of trying to profit from them, but that's in an ideal World, and we live in a fu**ed up World where the strong oppress the weak.

Over here it's my dog ate my homework, which could've easily been other important papers.

But in third world countries: "I'm sorry, you cannot gut that endangered species who swallowed your cell phone!"

How can someone from an "Developing" country afford it to buy an cellphone with internet? Mobile internet means an abbo. And an abbo means at lot of costs, African people often earn ( as mentioned in the article ) less than $1 a day!

Do we perhaps need to offer Bill Gates a new couple of glasses to see this? This is wasthing you money Bill, someone just said "Financiel Crisis"...

I'm sure there's alot of people who live on less than $1 a day who can't wait to pay $300 for a smart phone and $60/mo for a data plan.

It's that kind of accounting that gets you into banking in the first place.

"Hold on second while I check my bank balance," Joe said as he proudly keyed in his pin number using new touch screen phone running win mobile 6.5+. "Almost got it, crap!" he said as he read aloud, "sorry your program quit un-expectantly,do you wish to report this crash to MS to help us figure out how to improve our proprietary spyware?" After rebooting his cell phone and finally getting back to his bank he found out all his cash had been dumped too. Finally Joe wised up and moved to a Linux based phone and all his problems went away. His friend pulled his I am am in the back pocket of the FEDS spyware enabled phone and tossed it into the river without saying a word.