Bank

The bank of Lugalo

The mobile phones are threatening the future of the banks of Tanzania. The banks... few, only in the big cities, with shining tiles and people wearing a suit... The villagers enter afraid of making dirty not only the floor, but also the shirt of the employee. The banks... where you don't understand so much well what they are doing with your paper money... they take it, they put it inside a strange machine, they make them flutter about. Then they give you a paper to sign, showing you with the finger where to write your name, and that's all.

No... ordinary people have never entered into a bank. But that's not the end. Indeed nowadays to open a village bank it is enough to have a mobile phone. The Vodacom agent has got a microchip, on which is registered the amount of money he has deposited cash in the main Vodacom branch of Iringa. The money transition are done from phone to phone, from the son to the grandmother, from the mother to the son, who is studying in the boarding school of Lugalo. The boy receive his shillings from the mother directly on his phone. To get then the amount in the hands he turns to the vodacom agent, who asks the boy to transfer the money on his own chip and give then him the amount cash in the hands, with minimal transfer expenses. Finish. That's it. Quickly and easy. Convenient. A bank moving with a phone. Inaugurated just yesterday in Lugalo :-)