Mexico pushes mobile payments to help unbanked consumers ditch cash | Reuters
The evolution of mobile payments in emerging economies sits right at the intersection of our Digital Lifestyle and New Global Middle Class investing themes. Just as we saw emerging economies able to leapfrog with communication infrastructure thanks to the advent of the mobile phone, so are we now seeing them leapfrog with retail banking options. A recent article on Reuters describes what is happening just south of the border where “Mexico’s new leftist government is betting on financial technology to help lift people out of poverty.”
“In the future, it will no longer be necessary to have a bank in the sense of a traditional, established bank,” said Arturo Herrera, Mexico’s deputy finance minister. “Mobile phones will become banks.”Phone-based banking has proven a hit among the poor in other emerging markets such as China, India and Kenya. Those efforts have been driven by private sector companies that offer user-friendly, affordable apps.
This is similar to what we are seeing in India as that nation also looks to take advantage of mobile technology to provide banking services to the hundreds of millions of its citizens that are currently unbanked, giving them an ability to work their way out of poverty that would have otherwise been impossible.
Our investing themes look towards those companies providing the technology that allows for such implementations and those companies that will benefit as these implementations are rolled out.
Source: Mexico pushes mobile payments to help unbanked consumers ditch cash | Reuters
