Mobile financial services would increase emerging economies' GDP by $3.7T

I am trying to envisage the different possible ways new banking services can emerge. Can we ever expect a crypto currency to work? Or are we forever reliant on trusting third parties (ie banks)?

Having mobile banking services is possible of course but actual banking services are more than tracking my latte spend. The guy who founded Bank Of America walked into San Francisco the day after 1906 earthquake with a wheelbarrow of cash and started lending to the shop and business owners who needed to rebuild immediately.

That's the kind of banking service Africa will need in the next few decades, and New York or London or SV are not planning on an app that can do that.

So the consumer banking apps, they will come, but a banking infrastructure, funnelling loans into real businesses and infrastructure - that's a different kind of banking. One it seems we forget.

It was my understanding that Google banned non-Google in-app payments from the Play store. This has certainly stifled a lot of innovation, and basically leaves pre-loading and side-loading as valid distribution methods, neither of which are ideal. Historically I think that was partly to remove carrier billing as an option (Google and device manufacturers wanted to 'own the customer' instead of letting the carrier do it, which is traditional in the US). I know this as I am one of the few people in the world who has written an from-scratch in-app payment solution for Android that was actually widely deployed (US carrier-billing for T-Mobile and AT&T via a pre-loaded app on intial generation Samsung Galaxy series devices). Here in China, Google Play is blocked, there are at least five different app markets that come pre-installed on various vendors' phones, and we mostly all use WeChat payment and just routinely download APKs from the browser. It is normal for browser-downloaded APKs not to request permissions though. whereas fintech stuff well written may need quite a few permissions. I suspect Google has already made this hard.

... if more people could handle their finances from their mobile phones

is the rest of the title.

Also, the bank I work for allows mobile banking for 11 countries in Africa. 11/54 is not bad if you ask me.

I'm one of the organisers of the FinTech For Good Summit in London (more info: http://fintechforgoodsummit.com/).

If this topic is interesting to you and it is a discussion you want to get involved in, please do email me on j@greenaway.me. All welcome!

We are building a powerful group of people to advocate for the transformative impact of FinTech in developing economies, and we'd love to start a conversation with you too.