One of the hottest start-ups in the U.S. is Square, a credit-card reader and mobile app developed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. But Monitise and Fundamo – two technology companies that have teamed up with credit card company Visa — are helping traditional players such as mobile operators and banks to push such services to people in countries like Pakistan, where 85% of the population is unbanked, as well as customers in developed markets like the U.S. and Europe, a far bigger and more lucrative business.Read more

During his tenure as Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt attended a private meeting in Davos with a group of senior telecom executives and tried to crack a joke. “Why don’t you make all of the investment and we will take all the profits,” quipped Schmidt, according to a story making the rounds in the tech industry. Nobody in the room laughed. His stab at humour hit too close to home.

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In March 2007, Safaricom, the leading mobile operator in Kenya,  launched M‐PESA, an SMS‐based money transfer system that allows consumers to deposit, send, and withdraw funds using their mobile phones. Use of M‐PESA quickly skyrocketed, reaching more than 35 percent of Kenya’s adult population. But the service has not scaled globally. Informilo examines the reasons why.Read more