The developed nations seem to be trudging ahead with chip and pin and contactless credit and debit card technology just as Africa is developing a new paradigm of money transfer that transcends both of these creaky and insecure technologies.
I heard a version of this short documentary about it on the World Sevice a week or so ago, but here’s the full report, Kenya’s Mobile Revolution, from BBC2’s Newsnight.
Completely bypassing physical banking or telephone structures and using a combination of mobile phone networks and scratchcards, people in Kenya (and abroad working elsewhere) are able to trade more securely, to transfer money worldwide and take control of their own finances and futures. This is liberating many from the tyranny of financiers and predatory middlemen.
Africa in many ways is skipping the industrial revolution entirely and zooming right past the rest of us; we’re still in thrall to predatory lenders and outrageous bank fees, and hoping desperately that whenever we swipe our cards they’re not being cloned by some shady gang of identity thieves.
Speaking of which, here’s one of those ‘secure’ chip and pin terminals hacked to play Tetris:
Even given that the supposedly tamper-proof terminal had to be physically modified to do that, this video does not inspire confidence. That it can be so easily subverted should be a worry to all card-users.
I’m not starry eyed about the Kenyan developments either though. No doubt their system will be hacked in some way eventually too, human ingenuity and the lust for money being what it is.
Read more: Money, Economy, Banking, Development, Technology, Security, Hacks
