As world leaders in business, finance and politics congregated in Davos last week for the 40th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, two topics dominated public discussions: (i) how to avoid a “double-dip” of a still vulnerable global economy and (ii) how to support disaster relief for Haiti while implementing a longer term strategy for that country’s reconstruction and development.

But more was going on behind the scenes – and branchless banking was the topic of one by-invitation- only session attended by approximately 50 leaders from the banking, telecommunications and technology sectors. Participants included the CEOs of Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, Telecom Egypt, and India’s ICICI Bank.

Entitled “Advancing Models for Mobile Financial Services”, the session first divided participants among six relevant stakeholder groups – mobile network operators, banks, regulators, retail agents, innovators and donors – and asked them to identify the primary motivations and concerns of each group with respect to using mobile technology to provide financial services to the poor. The participants were then broken out into different groups organized around a specific end-user profile (for example, a poor rural farmer or an elderly widow receiving payments from her city-dwelling daughters) and asked to identify the opportunities and challenges of serving such customer.

The nearly 3 hour exercise forced private sector leaders to focus on how best to identify and serve customer needs – from remittances and savings to payments and credit. But solutions were not easy to come by as participants debated the appropriate roles of mobile network operators and financial institutions, and how regulation could impact the emergence of viable business models.

But participants were nevertheless motivated and expressed an interest in continuing to pursue branchless banking business models. “We know this train is coming,” one telcom CEO said to me as we left the session, “we are just figuring out the best way to jump on.”

-Michael Tarazi