The economy of trust and the mobile phone
The mobile phone gives us an opportunity to include the billions of people in the informal economy into the economy of trust. Today they have no formal credit history, no formal transaction record and are hence not credit-worthy. As Shivani Siroya of Tala says in this 8 minute TED talk, a simple credit score based on mobile phone data points like number of regular conversations and location regularity can help include billions of people into the formal credit economy. These people can avail loans, build their small businesses and increase their savings. More TED talks on the economy of trust here