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Africa's cell phone boom creates base for banking

August 28, 2005

The Christian Science Monitor:Cell phones in South Africa are performing the function of a personal piggy bank. With new cell-phone technology a grandmother in a rural area can receive money from her son who works hundreds of miles away. It's a solution designed to reach poor, unbanked people in South Aftrica who never have had access to banks, ATMs or credit cards.

"There's a large number of individuals who are unable to access banking services because conventional banking is expensive, relative to their income. And physically we don't have banking facilities in remote areas," said Herman Singh, director of technology engineering at Standard Bank, which has partnered with cell phone company MTN Group on the project.

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Read also: African bank offers cell-phone banking; Reaching the unbanked: Learning from South Africa's FIs