GATES: “Well, poor people don’t have bank accounts. So when they have an emergency, they want to borrow, save. It’s very tough. Small transactions, the fees are just too high when you have banks and ATMs and all that. If we take the cell phones and just use digital currency, then you can have all those financial services. So, 2 billion people who don’t have any kind of bank account will have all sorts of innovative services to help them save, pay for education. And it requires a little bit of work getting the regulation right, getting it to critical mass, getting people to trust it. But the magic of that cell phone, with the right software, means that people will have banking. And that’s really big for their lives. They can borrow when they need to.”
