The convergence of mobile communications and financial services will see more than 1.4 billion people worldwide benefiting from mobile financial services by 2015, according to new research by Edgar Dunn, a specialist on mobile banking and payments consultancy firm, in partnership with the GSMA, the global trade association for the mobile industry.

The GSMA has been supporting this market for the past year with two major initiatives: Mobile Money Transfer focused on international remittances and remote banking/payments and Pay-Buy-Mobile focused on transactions at point of sale. To further accelerate take-up of mobile wallets, the GSMA is working with Accenture, a global management consulting and technology services and outsourcing company, and Fundamo, a supplier of mobile banking and payments solutions, to establish a hosted mobile wallet platform that will enable mobile operators to pilot financial services rapidly and at low cost.

The Edgar Dunn research also found that the number one barrier to successful deployment of mobile wallets was government regulation. The GSMA calls on governments to ensure that regulation governing the deployment and usage of mobile financial services is proportionate to the risks involved. In particular, governments should:

• Regulate low risk money transfer services, which involve small amounts of money compared with traditional banking services, outside traditional banking regulation.
• Enable non-banks to become an agent of a bank or a remittance provider to facilitate the cash in and cash out activity on both sides of the mobile money transfer.
• Whenever possible, implement regulation on the systems level without interfering with the customer interface.

"We have an immense opportunity to positively impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people by making financial services mobile," said Sunil Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel and the GSMA board sponsor of the Mobile Money Transfer programme. "However, governments must ensure that proper regulations are put in place and obstacles removed to ensure the growth of this new market to deliver great value to the society."

According to the GSMA, balanced regulation can help increase access to financial services for poor people and is one way to fight poverty, according to a new report on regulating mobile banking from the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, a global resource center for microfinance. “Mobile telephony promises to radically transform the way people use financial services in rich countries and in poor ones,” said Elizabeth Littlefield, CEO of CGAP. “Wireless may also allow us to reach people conventional business models never could reach, bringing them for the first time the ability to manage their own household finances, safely storing cash, moving it, spending it or investing it when needs or opportunities arise."

For more information on Mobile Money Transfers please see http://www.gsmworld.com/mmt

For more information on the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor's report, please see http://www.technology.cgap.org