By 2030, two billion unbanked people will be storing money and making payment with their phones, Bill Gates predicts. The Microsoft co-founder and his wife Melinda have published their annual letter detailing where they think (and hope) the world will be 15 years from now. They note that traditional banks cannot afford to serve the poor because of their costs, which is why 2.5 billion people don't currently have a bank account.

The companies at the forefront of mobile banking, however, find it profitable to serve the poor as the cost of processing a digital transaction is zero. And as so many people in developing countries have mobile phones, the volume of transactions can be very high. By making small commissions on millions of transactions, mobile money outfits can make a profit and once these services get going, then there will be competitive innovation in offerings like special savings or credit plans related to farming or education. The letter cites Bangladesh as an example, a country where the fastest growing financial services venture is bKash. Less than four years after launching, it processes roughly two million tranasctions per day, with a total value of nearly $1 billion each month.

There are barriers that must be overcome, though. Mobile phone access, for example, still isn't equal, with only 46 per cent of Bangladeshi women owning a phone, compared to 76 per cent of men. There is a lot of work to be done in terms of developing countries updating their financial regulations. And there need to be enough locations where people can convert digital money into cash and vice versa.

Gates, though, is making his 2030 prediction on the back of strong demand among the poor, which means that poor countries don't have to wait for banks in developed countries to invent digital tools and then wait for them to trickle down. "Because the poor can in fact be a profitable customer base, entrepreneurs in developing countries are doing exciting work; some of which will 'trickle up' to developed countries over time," the letter concludes.

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