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In the eyes of the rest of the world, war-torn Afghanistan is a place with a beaten-down infrastructure, the minimum of modern amenities and certainly none of the services made possible by the latest technological advances powering the Internet, financial services and telecommunications.
Surprisingly, however, Afghanistan is on the leading edge of the mobile-money and banking revolution sweeping through developing countries from Kenya to Indonesia. For example, these days it’s not at all unusual to see an Afghan policeman on Kabul’s security cordon, known as the Ring of Steel, checking his Nokia 1101 to verify that his monthly salary has been transferred to his mobile wallet. Then, just as quickly, texting a sum of money to his wife’s mobile phone in rural Afghanistan so she can buy groceries for the family or a new propane tank for the kitchen.
Nothing this slick exists in the U.S. or most other G7 countries, but in Afghanistan – a country of 30 million where nearly 70% of the population is illiterate and fewer than 5% of people have a bank account – this scenario is part of reality. “I’m not aware of any such deployment in the U.S.,” says Tomasz Smilowicz, managing director with Citi’s Global Transaction Services in New York, referring to Afghanistan’s mobile-money service, known locally as M-Paisa . “It’s a success, no questions about it.”
M-Paisa was first introduced in this country in 2009 as a trial to pay the Afghan national police with mobile money instead of cash. The results were immediate and dramatic: costs dropped by 10% due to removal of phantom payments to non-existent officers being pocketed by middlemen. And the rest of the force thought they had received a 30% salary increase because these same middlemen were no longer able to skim cash from legitimate salaries.
Read more: How Afghanistan Is On the Leading Edge of a Tech Revolution | TIME.com
Surprisingly, however, Afghanistan is on the leading edge of the mobile-money and banking revolution sweeping through developing countries from Kenya to Indonesia. For example, these days it’s not at all unusual to see an Afghan policeman on Kabul’s security cordon, known as the Ring of Steel, checking his Nokia 1101 to verify that his monthly salary has been transferred to his mobile wallet. Then, just as quickly, texting a sum of money to his wife’s mobile phone in rural Afghanistan so she can buy groceries for the family or a new propane tank for the kitchen.
Nothing this slick exists in the U.S. or most other G7 countries, but in Afghanistan – a country of 30 million where nearly 70% of the population is illiterate and fewer than 5% of people have a bank account – this scenario is part of reality. “I’m not aware of any such deployment in the U.S.,” says Tomasz Smilowicz, managing director with Citi’s Global Transaction Services in New York, referring to Afghanistan’s mobile-money service, known locally as M-Paisa . “It’s a success, no questions about it.”
M-Paisa was first introduced in this country in 2009 as a trial to pay the Afghan national police with mobile money instead of cash. The results were immediate and dramatic: costs dropped by 10% due to removal of phantom payments to non-existent officers being pocketed by middlemen. And the rest of the force thought they had received a 30% salary increase because these same middlemen were no longer able to skim cash from legitimate salaries.
Read more: How Afghanistan Is On the Leading Edge of a Tech Revolution | TIME.com