A $50 Phone Can Unleash a Credit Revolution Across the Globe
A small band of policy influencers may unlock the next big prize for banks — the billions who operate outside the formal finance sector.
Banks are getting pushed out of the money game.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/BloombergA smartphone widely believed to be priced below $50, likely the world’s cheapest, will start selling a week from now. If Mukesh Ambani’s JioPhone Next, an Android device custom-built for India by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, is a hit in the price-conscious market, it will solve one problem for banks while posing another. With the country’s remaining 300 million feature-phone users going online, there will be a surge of customer data that can stand in for collateral. The question is, how will banks get their hands on it?
An answer has come from iSPIRT, a small band of policy influencers quietly setting up technology standards for India’s digital markets, inducing firms to enter new, open-network markets from online payments to healthcare.