Here's something new to worry about: a 21st century technique for funding terrorism.
We are on the cusp of a new era of terror financing, that of mobile payments or "m-payments." An m-payment system is being developed by members of the GSM Association to enable migrant workers and the poor who do not have bank accounts to transfer money internationally, efficiently and inexpensively. According to the World Bank, 175 million migrants transferred at least $230 billion international remittances in 2005. Are Hamas, al Qaeda, Hezbollah and their likes far behind?Posted by Alan at March 15, 2007 05:59 PMSoon, every mobile-phone owner will be able to send money, pay bills and make purchases anywhere, anytime. According to the GSM Association, 3 billion people have mobile phones, but only 1 billion people worldwide have bank accounts. BearingPoint, a major management and technology consulting company, estimated the unbanked marketplace in the United States alone in 2006 at $510 billion. No wonder that banks such as Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, BancorpSouth, as well as mobile phone companies such as Cingular, Verizon, Sprint and Vodafone, to name a few, are clamoring for a piece of the action.
Without the implementation of a real-time digital anti-money-laundering compliance framework, the m-payment system is well suited to become the "killer application" for money laundering and terror financing. All you need is a stored value card and m-payments enabled mobile phone and carrier.