Capturing the promise of mobile banking in emerging markets a new article and work by Christopher P. Beshouri and Jon Gravråk of McKinsey talks about the promise of mobile to bank the unbanked populations of developing and emerging economies.

I completed a project in 2005 with RTI, First Data, Whirpool, Microsoft, Yum! Brands and Humana looking at the possible future business models for emerging markets. This was a novel project bringing NGOs and Private Sector together for a hybrid economic development effort. Mobile banking was one of our more interesting recommendations and a very real possibility to drive economic growth and create/open new markets.

The McKinsey analysis is interesting and puts numbers to a real situation in the Philippines by sizing the opportunity and describing mobile banking providers. Most important and interesting was the willingness and interest of unbanked consumers in mobile banking. Definitely check this article out.