Brian Richardson wasn't the only one talking about mobile banking at the Clinton Global Initiative. Elizabeth Littlefield, CEO of CGAP, also made an appearance (Hat tip: Jim Rosenberg). Video of her talk can be seen here - first appearance is around 27:30. And here's a little excerpt:
In fact, the real Achilles heel all along has not been risk, it's been transaction costs, the costs of making tiny little transactions in remote areas to poor people, the tiny transactions that they need. So we figured if you can use cell phones or technology to reduce the cost, which it does, by 5, 10, 50-fold by using cell phones, then we could actually reach the most remote and poor people that we couldn't reach with the normal bricks-and-mortar branches.
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