NEWS WIRE: India: Boston Globe Reports on Mobile Payment Technology Flowing from Microfinance Institutions to Traditional Financial Institutions

The rise of cellphone banking in India highlights a new trend: technology developed in the Third World is flowing back to the First.

Source: Boston Globe.

Original article available here.

NEW DELHI, January 20 – Bapi Das, seated next to an open sewer in a teeming slum on the outskirts of this Indian city, combs his hand through his hair, smooths his moustache and prepares to enter the global financial system.

Das, a 42-year-old commercial painter, grins as a worker for a local microfinance group frames his face with a digital camera and zooms in. It is an important moment. His photo will adorn a smart card that, with help from a mobile phone and a fingerprint reader, will allow Das to store money electronically, make small cash withdrawals, and send money to his family on the other side of the country. It is the first bank account he has ever had.

This might seem like a classic example of the Third World struggling to catch up with the First. After all, people in the United States and Europe have been using ATM cards and the Internet for years to perform the simple banking tasks Das is only now able to do. But look again: The technology used to bring slum-dwellers like Das their first bank accounts is so advanced that it isn’t available to even the most tech-savvy Americans – at least not yet.

Soon, however, it may help you purchase groceries, withdraw cash from an ATM, or ride the subway. Already in the past year, Citigroup has taken a mobile banking system it pioneered in India and brought it to the United States. And a host of other companies, from Ford to Microsoft, are following suit: piloting new technologies and ways of doing business in the developing world, and only then bringing these products and services to wealthier consumers in more mature markets.

This represents a stunning reversal of the traditional flow of innovation. Until recently, consumers in the Third World also had to tolerate third-rate technology. Africa, India, and Latin America were dumping grounds for antiquated products and services. In a market in which some people still rode camels, a 50-year-old car engine was good enough. Innovation remained the exclusive domain of the developed world. Everyone else got hand-me-downs.

But today, some emerging economies are starting to leapfrog ahead. Why build a network of telephone wires out to remote areas when you can go straight to a cutting-edge mobile network at a fraction of the cost? Why burn fossil fuels for electricity and cooking if cleaner – and in some cases cheaper – alternatives, like solar and biogas, are available? Why electrify rural villages with incandescent bulbs if longer-lasting, environmentally friendly options like LEDs or new fluorescent bulbs exist? In many cases, it is mature markets like the United States and Europe, tethered to older systems, that find themselves playing catch-up.

By Jeremy Kahn, Boston Globe, continued here.

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