MANY people know that “mobile money”—financial transactions on mobile phones—has taken off in Africa. How far it has gone, though, still comes as a bit of a shock. Three-quarters of the countries that use mobile money most frequently are in Africa, and mobile banking in some of them has reached extraordinary levels.许多人都知道所谓的“手机货币”，即在移动电话上进行的金融交易，已经在非洲开始兴起。不管此项业务已经走了多远，它仍然带来了巨大的震惊。在所有使用手机货币最频繁的国家里，四分之三在非洲，而且其中一些国家的手机货币银行已经达到了惊人的水平。

A new survey of global financial habits by the Gates Foundation, the World Bank and Gallup World Poll found 20 countries in which more than 10% of adults say they used mobile money at some point in 2011. Of those, 15 are African. In Kenya, Sudan and Gabon half or more of adults used mobile money. In contrast, in countries with more developed financial systems, the share of adults who use mobile money is tiny—1% in Brazil and Argentina. If you think of banking by phone as just a way of using financial services, then these African countries—where people sometimes live several days’ walk from the nearest branch—are much more financially literate than you might think, just by looking at how many banks they have.

一项由盖茨基金会、世界银行和盖洛普世界民意调查共同主持的新的关于全球金融习惯的调查，发现超过10%的成年人声称他们曾经在2011年的某些时段使用过手机货币的国家有20个，其中，15个国家属于非洲。在肯尼亚、苏丹和加蓬，半数甚至更多的成年人使用过手机货币。与之相反的，在那些拥有更发达金融系统的国家里，成年人使用手机货币的占用份额却很小，比如在巴西和阿根廷，只有1%。如果你认为手机货币银行仅仅只是一种使用金融服务的途径，那么只需要看看他们拥有的手机货币银行数量，你会发现这些非洲国家比你认为的还要懂得理财，而在这些国家里，人们距离最近的分支银行有时需要几天的步行路程。

Most mobile-phone transactions are tiny. Market traders, for example, use mobile phones to pay peasant farmers for a single bag of cassava or maize-meal. One of the most successful mobile-phone products in Kenya is a SIM card costing just a few cents—but that is all people need for the occasional transaction. Mobile phones are also used to bank remittances from family members abroad. This may explain why mobile money has done so well in Somalia, a country which barely has a government, but where a third of adults said they used mobile money last year. Somalia is one of the countries that most depends on remittances: one study found that 80% of the capital for start-up firms came from the diaspora. Without mobile banking, this lifeline would be weaker than it is.

大多数手机交易都是微小的。这些市场交易，比如说，使用移动电话向农民支付一袋木薯粉或者玉米粉的价钱。在肯尼亚，最成功的手机产品之一是一张只需花费几分钱的SIM卡（客户识别模块卡），但是那却是所有人进行偶尔交易所需要的。移动电话同样被用于接收国外家庭成员的银行汇款。这或许能够解释为什么在索马里手机货币如此繁荣，而索马里是一个几乎没有政府的国家，却有三分之一的成年人声称他们去年使用过手机货币。索马里是最依赖于汇款的国家之一。一项研究发现，这里80%新成立的公司的资金都来自于海外。如果缺少手机货币银行，这条生命线将比现实情况还要更加虚弱。

For the most part, mobile-phone money is a substitute both for paper-based banks and for, say, sending cash via a bus driver. It enables people who cannot get to a branch or ATM to use financial services. This helps offset the bias of the banking system towards the well educated. In Africa only about 10% of people with primary or no education have bank accounts, compared with 55% of those with tertiary education. But rates of phone banking in some countries are high enough to prove that the practice is spreading beyond university graduates to the rest of the population.

大多数情况下，手机货币替代了纸质银行和现金，比如说，通过公交车司机支付的现金。它使那些无法到达分支银行或者自动柜员机的人能够使用金融服务。这有助于抵消银行系统对于受过良好教育者的偏好。在非洲，那些只受过初等教育或者没受过教育的人群当中，只有大约10%的人拥有银行账户，而相比较那些受过高等教育的人群，拥有银行账户者的比例达到55%。然而在一些国家里，手机货币银行的比例已经足够高，显示了此项业务正在从大学毕业生向其他人群扩散传播。

Sometimes, though, mobile banking goes hand in hand with the familiar kind. In Kenya, where a staggering 68% of adults use mobile money (by far the highest rate in the world, partly because regulation is extremely light), more than 40% also have ordinary bank accounts. The leapfrogging technology can also help the old-fashioned kind it has just vaulted over.

尽管如此，有时候手机货币银行还是同我们所熟知的普通银行齐头并进。在使用手机货币人数比例达到惊人的68%（目前全世界最高比例，部分原因是因为这里的管理非常轻松）的肯尼亚，同样有超过40%的人拥有普通银行账户。这种飞跃的科技同样能够帮助那种刚刚被它超越的旧时的技术。