What’s more convertible for currency – a mobile payment or a goat? At the moment, in India, the goat is the only option for many people. So said Vikram Akula, chairman of Indian microfinance powerhouse SKS at today’s plenary session on correspondent (branchless) banking, chaired by CGAP’s own Greg Chen at this (at times overwhelmingly large) microfinance jamboree in Delhi.

“We have financial apartheid in India. Yes, we have microcredit. But when it comes to cashless payments and a safe place to save, poor people are not just not included – they are financially excluded,” Akula said. “The business correspondent model, if  done correctly, can end financial apartheid.”

We often hear about cash under the mattress as the main form of savings for many of the world’s unbanked people, but other types of assets, especially livestock, are often a way to store value. Akula, who has been in the headlines lately for matters other than mobile banking, pointedly said to a round of applause, that if officials don’t ease the rules for agents (correspondent banking) for non-bank financial institutions, microfinance institutions, within 90 days, he’d like to suggest that the country’s microfinance providers encourage their clients to herd their goats into the nearest government office and say: Why is this goat the most liquid asset we can have? Why can’t we have branchless banking?

On a more serious note, Akula said three SKS staff were murdered in the past year because they were carrying lots of cash. As we’ve said many times on this blog, cash is the real issue around branchless banking – because cash is expensive to move around – it can make you a target of crime if you have a lot of it. And once it’s gone, there’s no recourse for recovery. That’s not the case when you have a system that allows you to convert cash into electronic value – whether that be a card network, a mobile phone system, or something altogether new that none of us has yet imagined. Enabling correspondent banking will not automatically eliminate the drawbacks of cash, but it is a first step towards creating a system that allows people to have alternatives to cash.

Most striking to me about today’s panel was the focus on regulation – and the lament by more than one speaker that Brazil, Kenya, the Philippines and other nations are light years ahead of India on this point…for now.