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about mmu
The GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Programme (MMU) accelerates the growth of
commercially viable mobile money services to
achieve greater fnancial inclusion.
It is estimated that 2.5 billion people in lower to mid-
dle income countries are unbanked. They lack the
fnancial services they need to invest in their liveli-
hoods, protect their assets, and avoid falling deeper
into poverty. Traditional bricks-and-mortar banking
infrastructure is too expensive to serve the poor,
particularly in rural areas. However, more than 1 billion
underserved people in these markets already have ac-
cess to a mobile phone, which can provide the infra-
structure to ofer fnancial services sustainably, such
as payments, transfers, insurance, savings, and credit.
The MMU Programme is focused on providing con-
venient, safe and afordable fnancial services to the
underserved by supporting mobile money services
to reach scale. We do this by identifying and sharing
benchmark data, operational best practices, and
commercially viable interoperability approaches, as
well as cultivating enabling regulatory environments.
The MMU Programme is supported by The Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, The MasterCard
Foundation, and Omidyar Network.
For more information, visit www.gsma.com/mmu
