In case you missed it, be sure to read CGAP’s top ten mobile banking and microfinance technology posts for 2009.

And with that, we jumped into the new year with a glimpse of a new brief by Mark Pickens: Window on the Unbanked: Mobile Money in the Philippines….

The Philippines provides a window onto the complex financial lives of low-income families. Three out of four Filipinos are unbanked (Demirgüç-Kunt, Beck, and Honohan 2008). The country hosts two of the earliest pioneers in mobile money—Smart’s Smart Money launched in 2001 and Globe’s GCASH launched in 2004. CGAP, GSMA, and McKinsey gathered data on 1,042 unbanked consumers in the Philippines, split between mobile money users and nonusers.

Our policy colleague Michael Tarazi asked, “Who assumes the risk in branchless banking?“

As it becomes increasingly clear that the largest obstacle to the success of branchless banking is the lack of a viable business model that provides financial incentives to all parties in the value chain (including the agents), regulators need to pay increasing attention to how to allocate risks and liabilities in way that promotes viable business models.

Chris Bold took us to one of the world’s toughest places for the unbanked with In Afghanistan, going where no bank has gone before:

It’s hard to think of a tougher environment in which to test the potential of mobile banking than Afghanistan. With a population of 30 million people, 36% of whom live below the government defined poverty line and 74% of whom are illiterate; Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world outside Africa. But bringing banking services to Afghanistan is exactly the challenge that Roshan, an MNO majority owned by the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, is taking on. We met with Zahir Khoja, Roshan’s Executive Director for M-Paisa, on a recent visit to Afghanistan to discuss the roll-out.

I did two interviews on the blog: Mongolian mobile banking - update from XacBank and Gates Foundation: $38 million to spur microsavings with technology;

Mark Pickens gave a quick take on the fast-moving market of Kenya, as well as a note about how M-PESA there is getting the attention of people such as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton;

Sarah Rotman started off two blog series by the team. The first is based on a recent paper on scenarios for branchless banking in 2020, and considers the ways in which a younger world will mean more mobile banking users. The other, a series of dispatches from recent work the team has been doing in Brazil, including Claudia McKay’s From rural outpost to boomtown: how banking services transformed a town in the Amazon:

One might think that a small town in the heart of the Amazon basin would be the last place to need banking services. Yet during a visit to one such town, Autazes, I encountered a community that credits banking services (via agents, termed banking correspondents in Brazil) with not only making life more convenient for its inhabitants but for sparking an economic boom.

Finally, a guest blog post from Amitabh Saxena, who asked a question that’s on all our minds: Is microfinance still relevant in branchless banking?

-Jim Rosenberg