Mobile Money as an Information Utility That Touches Everyone: Refining the Vision for Financial Inclusion

Ignacio Mas is a consultant in the field of mobile money and financial inclusion. He was formerly deputy director of Financial Services for the Poor at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has written widely for publications such as Innovations, Challenge, The International Economy, World Economy, World Development, and The Journal of Payments Strategy and Systems, and is coauthor of “Branchless and Mobile Banking Solutions for the Poor: A Survey of the Literature,” which appears in this issue.

Nicholas Sullivan is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Emerging Market Enterprises at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, and Codirector of the Fletcher Leadership Program in Financial Inclusion. He is author of You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones Are Connecting the World's Poor to the Global Economy (Jossey-Bass, 2007) and co-author (with Tonny Omwansa) of Money, Real Quick: Kenya's Mobile-Money Innovation (Guardian Books, 2012).