Banking the poor: The role of mobiles

It is estimated that about 90 per cent of the people living in developing countries do not have access to financial services. Also, in some developing countries including Ghana, some people live below the international poverty line of US 1 a day. Some of the issues related to this phenomenon include; difficulty in accessing banking services owing to geographic distance, bureaucratic nature of banking services and misconception regarding the inability of the poor to repay their loans. This article argues that if the traditional financial setting does not allow the poor to access to the financial services like banking, the poor could be offered banking services through mobile technologies. This article therefore proposes a Mobile Banking Model that conceptualizes key ways by which mobile phone technology can be used to increase pathways to banking access for poor people. Future research will focus on empirically testing this model.