Before the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, only 10 percent of the population had access to conventional banking services. After the earthquake, this number was even less as the disaster destroyed one-third of bank branches, ATMs and money transfer services.
Despite the lack of existing resources, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID saw an opportunity to implement a short-term solution with long-term gains using the one thing many Haitians had left – their mobile phones.
