Electronic money in Ecuador
Money from nothing?
THE refreshment trolley of Ecuador's central bank (BCE) is an unlikely guinea pig for an experiment with electronic money. The BCE wants its snacks cart to be the pilot for payments made via mobile phones and tablets. In future, central-bank staffers are to pay for sandwiches and soft drinks with their phones, rather than having their consumption charged to monthly payrolls.
The idea of mobile payments has worked well elsewhere, from Scandinavia to sub-Saharan Africa. Cashless transactions are quick, easy, and safe. In Ecuador, an estimated 40% of adults do not have a bank account but the number of mobile phones tops that of the country’s 16m inhabitants. A natural candidate for a mobile-money service is the $50 monthly cash-transfer payment that the government makes to 1.9m poor households.
But the way Ecuador is pursuing the idea of digital cash has led to nervousness in some circles. Elsewhere, private banks and mobile carriers operate the system, but in Ecuador the government-controlled BCE will run things....MORE
