Monday, August 15, 2011

Mobile Banking Could Lift GDP 5%

In five countries studied, mobile financial services has the potential to reduce financial exclusion by five to 20 percent through 2020 and increase GDP by up to five percent, says the Boston Consulting Group.

Mobile financial services also could reduce the number of unbanked people in Pakistan by 20 per cent by 2020, according to the Boston Consulting Group, who conducted the study on behalf of Telenor Group.

In India the number of people with formal savings accounts could increase by 142 million. In Bangladesh it could increase tax revenues with $500 million. And in Serbia it could lead to 23,000 new jobs being created.

The study also shows that economic inequality in Malaysia could be reduced by five percent and become roughly equivalent to that of Canada today. In the developing world, more than 2.5 billion adults - or approximately 72 percent of the population - are unbanked, meaning they have no access to traditional financial services like banks.

At the same time, nearly 2.5 billion people in these same emerging economies have mobile phones. This means that there could be up to 2 billion mobile phone users who are currently unbanked that could be served through mobile financial services.

No comments:

Directv-Dish Merger Fails

Directv’’s termination of its deal to merge with EchoStar, apparently because EchoStar bondholders did not approve, means EchoStar continue...