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the unbanked and underbanked. Much of this interest is thanks to the dramatic rise in the number of mobile phone subscribers in emerging economies, which now exceed the number of bank accounts in most countries. Increased numbers of subscribers, combined with the early success of mobile money in countries like Kenya, are driving interest in mobile money and mobile financial services (MFS) to expand the outreach of financial services. Though the excitement and interest in this sector continues, the past year has seen a shift to a broader use of technology to reach the unbanked. This new area of interest, now referred more broadly as digital financial services (DFS), takes a more comprehensive view of supporting financial inclusion by involving a much broader range of institutions. Among the institutions that have provided and helped shape the new emphasis on DFS to support financial inclusion are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a wide range of publicand private-sector members in the Better Than Cash Alliance, which focuses on using electronic funds transfers as well as mobile money to speed the shift to DFS. In this paper, I focus on this broader approach to improving financial inclusion via DFS and share lessons learned from a practitioner in the field point of view.

Given its strong recent growth, the global mobile industry is now a major source of employment opportunities. Mobile industry jobs can be categorized into direct and indirect ones, with a diverse labor force supplying each category. Direct jobs are created by mobile operators and manufacturers in professions that range from engineers to managers to sales support staff. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that around 1.5 million people are directly employed in the industry worldwide (ITU 2011). The total number of jobs fitting this narrow “direct” description may begin to decline as the industry becomes commoditized. Indirect jobs, however, show strong potential for growth, in professions related to mobile application development, content provision, and call center operations. Indirect jobs can be created by mobile operators and manufacturers, as well as by third-party content and device producers, including entrepreneurs. In some emerging markets, outsourcing of mobile content development also creates significant numbers of indirect jobs. In India, the mobile industry is expected to generate around seven million indirect jobs during 2012 (COAI 2011). This report argues that faster mobile networks and more capable smartphones make mobile communications a platform for innovation across different sectors (such as health, agriculture, and financial services), supporting overall employment numbers in an economy. The greatest potential for employment growth derives from demand for services enabled by mobile phones.

Mobile for Development Department within GSMA, I found myself in a busy market on the outskirts of Nairobi, weaving my way through a maze of stalls to the buildings beyond. I was honing in on those painted “Safaricom green”—not a hard task, as it sometimes seems as if every other building in rural Kenya is painted this color—and was enjoying spending the day talking to users and agents of mobile money services. Nestled amidst the market stalls I found a pharmacy painted the ubiquitous Safaricom green, so I went in to meet the owner and rattle off my usual list of questions. The pharmacy was as expected—rows of medicines, an assistant in a reassuring white lab coat. However, perched at the edge of the counter was a huge ledger used to record M-PESA transactions, and on the walls a smattering of posters advertised M-PESA services, explaining the charges and noting the MPESA agent’s number. I questioned the pharmacist: How long had he been running an M-PESA agency within his shop? About a year. Was he happy with it? Yes, very happy. Was it providing a good side income to his pharmacy? Yes, but more than that. What did he mean? He earned more from being an M-PESA agent than he did from the pharmacy. Really? How long did it take for this to happen? About three months. Three months! Within three months the revenue from being an M-PESA agent had outstripped that of running the pharmacy, which probably had taken the man years to train for and to build up a business. What this man now was running was, effectively, a phone-enabled bank in the same building as his less profitable phar