Client reports
Branchless banking has great potential to broaden and deepen access to financial services for poor people in both urban and rural areas, and mobile phone banking is at the leading edge of branchless banking. The regulatory regime has a crucial impact on the successful development of mobile banking, which depends on the establishment of proportionate regulation that provides an open but safe regulatory environment. The World Bank has recently published a study of mobile banking in Southern Africa by OPM (in association with the IRIS Centre at the University of Maryland). The study is based on individual country level diagnostics of branchless banking regulation, and of regulations affecting cross-border flows for the selected countries. Recommendations are made for follow-up activities to promote the rapid, but safe, take off of domestic and cross-border branchless banking the region.
This publication is also available on the CGAP Microfinance Gateway website.
(1141k)