Plan Finland commissioned this research into the potential value of mobile technologies to the type of child-centred community development work to which they are committed. While the nature, scope and scale of any work involving mobile technologies will depend entirely on the context, stakeholders and development objectives, this guide
provides:
– an overview of relevant and innovative examples of how mobile
telephones have been successfully integrated into development projects and processes; and
– a three stage process to help Plan staff and other development
practitioners identify the key social, economic and technical factors and issues they need to consider when planning to use mobile technologies.

Here’s an interesting study on the money, culture and information technology that I found insightful on this topic called “designing for money across borders”

http://mams.rmit.edu.au/ogjna6tfza2wz.pdf

“The larger story is one of pilot projects that petered out amid difficulties including cumbersome national regulations, unfriendly user interfaces, and an inability to make the right partnerships. “The reality of the field today is that the promise–which a lot of people understand is huge–is more in the conceptual stage,” says Michael Chu. “The banking industry is very suspicious of the cell-phone industry, because they suspect that cell phones will make them obsolete. The cell-phone companies think the banks are like dinosaurs.” But these players have to work together seamlessly for cell-phone-based banking to work.”

source

A great example of an independent effort is Wizzit who are run through the Bank of Athens – you can see by their website that a lot of their prominent press releases where back in 2005 – Now it looks like a great solution but over 3 years since launch and they still have minimal client base compared to the big banks – I can only assume they either didn’t get the funding they needed for major expansion or they were really just wanting to get brought out.