GSM Mobile Phones Enabling Low Cost Global Financial Transfers

Wow! Its sad how quickly new financial technology gets lumped into international terrorist and criminal blacklists.

The GSM Association (GSMA) is the global trade association representing 700 GSM mobile phone operators in over 200 around the world. In addition, more than 180 manufacturers and suppliers support the Association’s initiatives as key partners. The Association’s members serve more than two billion customers – 82% of the world’s mobile phone users.

The primary goals of the GSMA are to ensure mobile phones and wireless services work globally and are easily accessible, enhancing their value to individual customers and national economies, while creating new business opportunities for operators and their suppliers.

According to the GSMA, worldwide, less than one billion people have a bank account but close to three billion now have a mobile phone.

In February the GSM Association launched a pilot program to assist an estimated 200 million international migrant workers in their quest to send funds home, cross border, to their dependents most of whom do not have bank accounts. The GSMA program will allow a person to put cash onto his or her mobile phone and send it to a mobile phone number in another country. This program should be a grand success, by exploiting the extensive reach of these global networks it will enable tens of millions of people more affordable, instant money transfers to loved ones and family. In fact, the GSMA believes the program could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than $1 trillion by 2012. They could do all of this while significantly lowering the transfer costs to consumers. Wow.

Rob Conway, CEO of the GSMA, the global trade association for mobile operators had this to say,

“We are mobilizing financial services for the billions of people who are unbanked and the underbanked.” *http://www.gsmworld.com/

Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman & Managing Director, Bharti Airtel and Board Member of the GSM Association said,

“It will revolutionize the money transfer industry with its advantages, such as reach, ease of use, and lower transaction costs and provide immense benefits to people in developing nations such as India.” *http://www.gsmworld.com/

Unfortunately, Rachel Ehrenfeld, founder of the Terror Finance Blog, is already calling the pilot program “terrorist dream”. She says that

“Soon, they[terrorists] and other criminals can use cell phones to transfer money around the globe.” *http://www.wirelessweek.com/

Its very sad to see this.