About 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to formal financial services, and yet one billion of them have a mobile phone. Branchless banking systems take advantage of increasingly ubiquitous real-time mobile communications networks to bring banking services into everyday retail stores, thereby alleviating the lack of banking infrastructure in the communities where poor people live and work. Most of these deployments are quite recent, hence there is a shortage of hard empirical evidence relating to them. However, one mobile banking scheme, M-PESA in Kenya, has been phenomenally successful and has been a catalyst for much of the research done to date. In this article, we review the emerging literature on the definitions and model taxonomies employed in mobile banking; the status and drivers of global adoption of these schemes; the take-up and usage patterns of customers and their socioeconomic impact; and, finally, regulatory issues. Our objective is to help policymakers and practitioners in their continued efforts to create an enabling environment for branchless banking. FINANCIAL ACCESS NEEDSThe financial lives of the poor have been amply and vividly described in Collins et al. (2009). Their income is precariously small and often irregular. For instance, they may be smallholder farmers with seasonal income or day laborers without guaranteed employment. Occasionally they face a crisis that can easily overwhelm their means, such as a serious illness or death in the family, or natural events such

community development finance, performance measurement, stakeholder theory, L31, L25, R10,

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractIn developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate on the question of whether an uncovered demand for microlending services exists. The present pilot study explores customer preferences for microlending products in Germany. Among the interviewed business owners, 15% reported revolving funding needs and an interest in microloans. We find that potential recipients of microloan products are retail business owners, foreign business owners, and persons who had previously received private loans. Furthermore, financial products should feature rapid access to shortterm loans. JEL-classification: G21, D12, M31

No abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This paper investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans -in particular instalment loans and overdrafts -to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and non-financial household variables we show that self-employed households particularly use personal overdrafts significantly more often than employee households. When analyzing the correlation between consumer loan take-ups and consumption of selfemployed in comparison to employee households, we find first evidence that overdrafts are used by self-employed to finance their business as well. This indicates that intermingling constitutes a financing strategy when regular business loans might not be accessible.JEL Classification: G32, D12, D14