To most Americans and Europeans, the mobile payments industry is just starting to get off the ground. With Facebook’s option to send money to friends via mobile, new offerings from Square Pay, and the recent release of iPhone 6 and Apple Pay, TechCrunch reports that 2015 seems like the “Year of Mobile Payments.” But the fact is that a lot of these options are way behind what’s happening in other parts of the world.
There’s a distinction between these “mobile wallets” which merely link a user’s credit or debit card to their mobile device, and mobile money, where your phone actually holds the value like a mini-bank. Mobile Money is proliferating in many parts of the world where access to traditional banking is not available to many, and it’s in these places in Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, where mobile money is really taking off, advancing far beyond what is available to people in Europe and North America.
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