Bill Gates eyes m-banking as the future

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation thinks that mobile banking can do a lot to bring valuable financial services to underserved areas. Toward that goal, the dynamic duo has donated $12.5 million to bring cheap, mobile financial services to developing markets.

The program will support roughly 20 projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America with the goal of reaching 20 million previously unbanked people by 2012. Now, in the grand scheme of things, this is a mere drop in a very large bucket, but it does offer hope that the private sector will embrace the concept. And there's more where that came from, the World Bank and others have noted the potential of mobile banking, but commercializing it is a whole new ball game. Citi had been one of the leaders, providing services in 26 countries, including India. But it's not in the best shape to really spearhead this right now. Perhaps Bill should form a company?  

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