If an economy is in fact built on transactions, then certainly a growing economy is built on an increasing number of simple, fluid transactions. A practical reason why many areas in emerging nations aren’t growing economically is because they don’t have the infrastructure to do so. Even if you gave every man, woman and child in rural Africa a $100 Visa gift card, it would essentially be worthless to them – there’s no place to swipe or redeem it.

In the U.S. and Europe, again, we take ATM machines, debit/credit card terminals, automated checkout counters and handheld POS terminals for granted. They are ubiquitous. We use them every day without thinking about the cost or effort required to put them in front of us. Many of the people we’re talking about in emerging nations have never, or only very rarely, seen any of these devices. But most of them have or have access to mobile phones.

The beauty of using mobile technology as a conduit or replacement for cash transactions is that the infrastructure is lightweight and is already in place. You would not need to initiate a massive effort to build banks, install ATMs and POS terminals, or any of the landline networks required to connect them. You just use what’s already there – mobile phones and top-up vendors. The rest is done on the back end without any, or very few, boots on the

issues, like the fact that bandits and crooks will always find ways to break into technologies to steal money, identities, etc. Regardless, I am convinced that the biggest limiting factor in economic growth is access – access to cash, access to information (and education), and access to communication. Mobile phones can provide all three of these things, and that’s why I believe they are so important to emerging economies. The payments angle provides a role for the OSS/BSS sector in this positive shift. Because mobile payments are so back end driven, it is up to this sector to make it easy to deploy and highly secure for both merchants and customers. It is rare that something like a billing system can play as important a role in someone’s life as a medical clinic or fresh water well. It’s up to our industry to make that happen.

For more information on the Marion Medical Mission, please visit: http://marionmedical.org/