We hear a lot about the explosion in mobile payments, and new analysis by Gartner supports the idea that the tech is rapidly expanding--it'll rise 44% worldwide to over $235 billion worldwide this year. But Gartner's data may contain a surprise: The growth in use isn't to do with NFC wireless payments or even e-wallet enterprises. Mobile payments are more about money transfers and bill payments. In fact money transfers will be 71% of this year's transaction value, and Gartner expects this share to remain high, even up to 69% in 2017. The analysis suggests that more people are using their phones to make money transfers partly because more banks and financial institutions are making the facility available (and more members of the public have smartphones). It's also noted that transferring cash in this manner can cost less than using a traditional banking route.

With rapidly declining natural environments comes new opportunity for the inhabitants of these ecologically endangered regions – capitalist opportunity. Granted that the majority of areas facing habitat loss are located away from the general public and therefore relatively unknown, theses sites are in serious danger of falling completely out of existence. There is however a solution that could both preserve the natural wonders of the world and profit the keepers of them.

Now everyone, most especially private individuals without access to banking services, can open an account and have a simple and safe method of payment… Lemon Way solutions already enable millions of users to do their shopping (food, taxis etc) and transfer money to their friends and families…

Mobile network O2 has launched a smartphone app that allows users to transfer up to £500 via text message. It also allows customers to "digitise" their debit and credit cards to speed up purchases from online stores. The firm also intends to allow users of phones with near-field communication (NFC) chips to make contactless payments in high street shops.

At Mobile World Congress 2012, Amdocs, a leading provider of customer experience systems, today announced the launch of Amdocs Mobile Payments. The new solution is a cloud-based gateway, enabling mobile operators to quickly, securely and cost-effectively scale their mobile payments business for both prepaid and postpaid customers to open new revenue streams. Mobile payments that are charged via the carrier offer consumers the convenience of charging purchases directly to their mobile phone bill, prepaid balance or mobile wallet.

Wind turbines could also provide drinking water in humid climates following a breakthrough by a French engineering firm. Eole Water modified your typical electricity-generating turbines to allow them to distill drinking water out of the air in a bid to help developing countries solve their water needs. A prototype in Abu Dhabi already creates 62 litres of water an hour, and Eole hopes to sell turbines generating a thousand litres a day later this year.

Scientists say a new study shows that Africa sits on a vast reservoir of groundwater that could provide a reliable source of water for drinking and agriculture. Scientists say an estimated 300 million people in Africa do not have access to safe drinking water and with climate change making rainfall less predictable, their plight is even more precarious. So research into a vast reservoir of groundwater beneath the continent is meaningful.

That’s a key question facing bankers these days, given the cost of establishing a mobile offering and the accelerated pace at which the mobile landscape is evolving. The short answer is “yes”—if you go about it right.

Government has set aside a basket fund of about Rwf400 million to cater for scientific innovations, especially in the areas of Information Communication Technology (ICT), Agriculture and Manufacturing. The fund, known as Rwanda Innovation Endowment Fund (RIEF), was initiated by the Ministry of Education in partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) sub regional office under the One UN Rwanda. It will support projects that promote innovations in science, technology and research which could transform the social and economic development of the country.

We often celebrate companies and individuals once they've achieved undeniable success, but shun their disruptive thinking before reaching such a pinnacle. Before Oprah was Oprah, before Jobs was Jobs, they were labeled as misguided dreamers rather than future captains of industry. You tend to hear about startups when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a systematically distorted perception that companies succeed overnight. Almost always, when you learn the backstory, you find that behind every “overnight success” is a story of entrepreneurs toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends, users, and investors supporting them.

The idea has a wonderfully simple and powerful appeal: Give a tiny loan to a poor person in a poor nation. Watch her start a small business – whether hawking tomatoes or fattening goats – that puts her and her family on the first rung of a ladder that will elevate them out of poverty and into the middle class. Repeat across the planet.

World Bicycle Relief, a not for profit organization created by bike industry leader SRAM Corporation to aid victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka recently distributed its 100,000th bicycle to people living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

Milford Bateman has made a cogent case for community-based financial institutions that prioritise sustainable local solutions. Milford Bateman is perhaps best known for his strident attacks on microfinance as an anti-poverty strategy, including his sometimes acrimonious debates with David Roodman, another microfinance analyst. Bateman claims that, by diverting resources away from more productive investments and indebting poor people with no significant return, the microfinance "fad" has been anti-developmental, benefiting lenders most.

Western Union's (WU) business model remains sound. With market fears on this issue driving a low valuation on the stock, investors have a good opportunity to invest in a fundamentally attractive business.

Social enterpreneurship grows in area where neither innovation nor social and environmental problems are in short supply

The conventional path to economic development is through the use of fossil fuels and the associated negative environmental impact. One alternative to encourage actual sustainable development is green microfinance, using small loans for environmentally beneficial or neutral business enterprises. Unlike traditional micro loans, conditions or incentives placed are placed on the loan condition to encourage the sustainable use of resources.

Some 15,400 kilometers away from Vancouver, B.C., farmers in the southern African nation of Zambia have seen their crop yields improve thanks in part to a small group of Canadian engineers. Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Engineering+students+encouraged+think+globally/6232493/story.html#ixzz1oSpxEsW4

Conferences usually are not the venue for admitting failure. But on the first day of the Harvard University’s 2012 Social Enterprise Conference, Vikram Akula, the founder of SKS Microfinance who left the organization in November 2011, made just such an admission. In a speech delivered at the day’s closing reception, Akula described his experience first establishing the organization as a non-profit, converting to a for-profit model, and taking the company public in 2010. He recalled how Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank criticized him and the SKS model, and observed: “Today, I can look back at what we did and say, ‘Professor Yunus was right.’” “We really are at a crossroads,” The Economist’s Matt Bishop observed at the opening of the second day of Harvard’s Social Enterprise Conference. We’ve reached a point in time to rethink how markets work, and how more people can share in the benefits of the global economy, he noted.

Collecting the monthly subscriptions for her co-operative has always been a headache for Thelma Nare, 41. This is because Nare lives in Tshitshi, Plumtree in rural Zimbabwe, about 60 kilometres away from the humdrum of the nearest town centre where banks are located. "We meet after a long time as here in the rural areas our homesteads can be very far from each other. So members of our club do not meet or contribute regularly," Nare said.

Is mobile banking worth chasing? That’s a key question facing bankers these days, given the cost of establishing a mobile offering and the accelerated pace at which the mobile landscape is evolving. The short answer is “yes”—if you go about it right.

Two young University of Washington graduates launch an innovative new type of micro-lending company called Lumana, helping entrepreneurs in rural Africa to create sustainable businesses.

Microfinance has largely become a city-based endeavor, but one example suggests it would be more useful if focused on rural communities. Microfinance -- the practice of personal small loans to spur creativity in developing nations -- has well-known rural roots.

So-called “impact investors” -- providers of capital to businesses that solve social challenges while generating a profit -- are the current rage in economic development. US President Barack Obama’s Office for Social Innovation and Civic Participation recently convened more than 100 practitioners to discuss how impact investing could be unleashed in the United States and the developing world.

Meet ChotuKool. A refrigerator with no compressor, it is tiny, weighing in at less than 18 pounds. It can run on a 12-volt battery and can be yours for about $75. Most importantly, you can get it in some of the most hard-to-reach rural areas of India. “Chotu” means “the small one” in colloquial Hindi. It may well be the Next Big Small Thing.

Famine is not simply caused by a lack of food in the global supply. We must -- and can -- do better.

"ONE is about justice, not charity," he says. "It's about the shared value of every human life. That's why we're here -- to bring this to people's attention and to do something about it. …Your voice together with mine together with millions of others makes a big difference." Advocacy group ONE is gaining support for its efforts to end the critical famine in Somalia with its new PSA effort, "The F Word: Famine Is the Real Obscenity." The PSAs, which debuted last week online and on TV, have already inspired more than 200,000 people worldwide to sign the organization's petition to end famine.

From changes to the curriculum to getting Transitional University status or by making the financial case for energy savings, we share the best bits from some experts' sustainability live chat

Amid growing concerns about drought crises in some small island States of the Pacific, the United Nations today called for comprehensive risk reduction steps to be put in place to protect vulnerable populations living in delicate ecosystems.

Gabby Logan presents the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of the MicroLoan Foundation. The MicroLoan Foundation is a specialist ‘not for profit’ UK microfinance charity that provides microfinance (small loans of on average £70), business education and ongoing mentoring support to impoverished women in sub-Saharan Africa. This provides them with a “hand-up not a hand-out” so they can develop self-sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their families, and work their own way out of poverty. 99% of the loans are repaid and then recycled in full to help more women year after year.

Mobile phone use in Bangladesh is not a luxury now. Almost half of the country's 160 million population uses mobile phones, but very few have bank accounts. There were lot of talks in the past few years on how the big population could be brought under the banking services via their mobile handsets. The GSM Association (GSMA) predicts that by 2012, nearly 300 million of the previously "unbanked" will be using some form of mobile banking.