The charitable foundation set up by Bill Gates and wife Melinda is to donate $12.5million (£8.6m) to help bring mobile banking to the developing world.
It is hoped that the grant will give 20 million ‘unbanked’ individuals access to financial banking technology by 2012.
Current estimates suggest that up to a billion individuals currently have access to a mobile phone but are unable to afford the banking services that we in the Western world take for granted.
The funds donated by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be spread between 20 projects, primarily within Africa, Asia and Latin America. However, rather than funding a service directly, it will instead be used by the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) programme to conduct research designed to attract the interest and cooperation of network operators.
By overcoming a number of limitations, both practical and regulatory, that currently stand in the way of the widespread development of mobile banking within the programme's target areas, the MMU plan to encourage the development of reliable, affordable mobile financial services suitable for those who currently find traditional banking system out of reach.
Director of the Financial Services for the Poor initiative at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bob Christen, explained: "Traditional financial services are often too costly and inconvenient for people who earn less than US$2 a day to obtain, and too expensive for banks to provide,
"Technology like mobile phones is making it possible to bring low-cost, high-quality financial services to millions of people in the developing world so they can manage life's risks and build financial security."
