Cellphone Banking Helping To Fight Poverty In India 76
An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review is running an in-depth story about the way cellphone banking is transforming the lives of many poor people in India. By enabling users to manage a legitimate bank account and finance micro-loans, cellphones are a major force of social and economic change. It's perhaps not surprising, given that despite widespread poverty, India has the world's fastest-growing cellphone market and the second largest number of cellphone users (after China). The article mentions one Indian start-up, mChek, that is thriving as a result. There's also an excellent video report."
Re:despite widespread poverty (Score:3, Informative)
About a year back voice connectivity and edge data cost about 350 INR a month. At present exchange rates it is 8 USD a month. Significantly lower. However one must remember that real-estate and labour costs are much lower in India.
Mobile is the way to go (Score:3, Informative)
I know the mCheck people and they are doing great work. They face 2 major challenges :
1. Getting more and more mobile operators and banks on board.
2. Keeping their cost low. IIRC, each transaction costs them about Rs. 2-3 which is quite high if you think of transaction size of Rs. 20-30
However, mobile penetration is ever-increasing in India. It is one of fastest growing telecom markets in the world. And I've been told of places in India where there is no electricity but the people have mobile phones. (There is an awesome story about how they charge their batteries, but that for some other time).
So mobile is the way to go not just for for democratization of information but also for economic liberation of the people.
Cheers !!!
Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
Of course China and India have the largest cell phone populations in the world... They have more then 1 third of the worlds population between them.
(Know why more people are using cell phones and not land lines? It's a shit load easier to throw up towers then to run cables. And a shit load easier to guard against people stealing the metal for raw materials.)
Cell phones are great for poor people, especially farmers. They can ring up potential buyers before travelling a day to market. (They might travel south instead of north.)
I've also read that they are used to send money back home for people (from the country side who live) in cities. They buy cell phone credit, then they ring a fellow in the home village and tell him the voucher number, and he types it into his phone and gets the credit, and then gives that amount of money (minus a small fee) to the family.
Innovation comes, so often, from necessity.