We’re all aware new technology is continually sweeping in, disrupting industries, and birthing new ones, but how is technology today changing finance and banking?
New Kinds of Bank Accounts
We’re all familiar with the traditional kinds of bank accounts, you pay to open the account, send your money, and they pay a percentage in interest, all the while investing your money into various enterprises and industries.
While that’s all well and good, interest rates have been spectacularly low for a number of years, and you’ve really no say in how your bank is investing your money. No environmentalist wants to hear his or her bank has been investing heavily in the oil industry, for instance.
There’s new kinds of bank accounts out there that allow you to say where exactly your bank should be investing your money, and pay higher rates of interest.
Thanks to a mobile-centric operation, banks like Good Money have low operating costs compared to a traditional bank, and pass those savings, in the form of better interest rates and no opening fee, onto you.
As well as higher interest rates, you can tell your bank how you want them using your money. That’s a powerful option if you’ve got a cause you care about.
It’s all thanks to mobile banking essentially.
Money is Mobile Now
Remember when in order to check your bank balance, you had to find a cash machine? That’s just one of a thousand necessary services and transactions that mobile banking has changed drastically.
Its thanks in no small way to the prevalence of smartphones and mobile internet. In less than six years, all eight billion of us will be directly connected to the internet, allowing us all to communicate and perform a thousand different services and tasks that, even just five years ago, would have demanded vastly more time and effort.
Mobile banking is one of the areas that’s really riding this wave of technology, and it’s only set to get better, more convenient, more secure and easier to use.
The benefits of mobile banking are huge. The ability to effectively save money, and see where resources are being spent. The option to quickly and effectively borrow money for various enterprises.
There’s still at least two billion people worldwide without access to online banking, and with the unfeasibility of installing and building ATMs and bank branches in some of the world’s most rural, poorest places, mobile banking makes for a clear path forward.
Companies like bKash and Ant Financial are stepping up with cheap and effective mobile banking and payment services, and Vodafone has rolled out their M-Pesa system across South Africa and Southern Asia.
M-Pesa allows anyone, no matter how rurally located, to receive and send cash, without the dangers and logistical problems of sending physical money. The benefits of services like these in poorer rural areas are massive, helping to lift people out of poverty.