Cell phones are serving as a bank in your pocket, providing virtual accounts for South Africans excluded from the financial mainstream by exorbitant charges and branch networks clustered in wealthy white suburbs.

[...] A 2003 survey estimated that only half of South African adults had a bank account, but a third of those without an account owned a mobile phone. Cell phones have spread quicker than bank accounts across the rest of Africa.

"People might not have shoes but they have a cell phone," said Brian Richardson, chief executive of Wizzit, a small start-up that pioneered cell phone banking in South Africa. "We can turn that phone into a bank in your pocket."

FinMark, a British-backed non-governmental organization that looks at ways financial markets can help the poor, estimates at least half of all bank accounts in South Africa will be administered via cell phones within five years.