Can Mobile Money Transform a Country?

Posted by Charley Johnson and Priya Jaisinghani / January 17, 2012

A customer, left, signs up for mobile banking at a supermarket on March 3, 2011, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. [USAID photo by Kendra Helmer]

Two years after the earthquake, Haiti is rebuilding not just brick by brick, but click by click.

The earthquake left behind a government in rubble, an economy in shambles, and a people living in makeshift camps, coping with enormous loss. Against this backdrop, the possibility of progress lives not just in the resilient spirit of the Haitian people, but also in the simple power of their mobile phones.

In June 2010, USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI). This program leveraged the private sector and the ubiquity of mobile phones to bring financial services to Haitians, 90 percent of whom didn't have… more »

Posted under: Western Hemisphere

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