The summer seems to have come and gone - and with it, a surge of interest in mobile banking for the unbanked. But how much of it is hype - and how much of it will really change the way poor people get financial services? I asked that question just after the Mobile Money Summit. You tell me.

Sarah Rotman sent this dispatch from West Africa where Orange and MTN are in hot pursuit of market growth. And a common regulatory framework makes cross-border transactions possible.

Olga Morawczynski told us what we don’t know about M-PESA, while Cameron Goldie-Scot explained how to link microfinance with mobile banking.

We then got a rundown on mobile banking in Tanzania, as Sarah asked if Kenya’s success could be replicated next door. Gunnar Camner and Emil Sjöblom of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden blogged about their attempts to investigate mobile banking services from a user perspective. In which contexts do alternative uses, e.g. savings, become popular and why?

All this talk about whether M-PESA would thrive beyond Kenya caught the eyes of more than a few folks….

And rounding out what was not a quiet August, Mark Pickens shared his thoughts on big names getting into mobile banking: Nokia, Microsoft, and PayPal have all taken fascinating steps in recent days to enable more financial services aimed at the poor and unbanked…someday. Mark also pointed us to exciting news in India, wondering if a new biometric ID card program could help make government transfers more secure.