The mobile payments company Obopay Inc. is working with Grameen Solutions Ltd. of Bangladesh to promote its payment system to the world's poor.
Obopay, of Redwood City, Calif., said that the Grameen-Obopay Bank a Billion Initiative, announced Tuesday, would provide financial services through mobile phones, including remittances, payments, and savings and deposit accounts, in developing countries.
Obopay said the effort is in keeping with some of its key founding principles.
"I was inspired to found Obopay when I was volunteering in Africa and saw that while people in remote corners of the world often lacked access to the most basic financial services, they almost all had mobile phones," Carol Realini, Obopay's chief executive, said in a press release.
Alongside Grameen, Obopay plans to deliver banking services through mobile phones to a billion people by 2018.
The project is set to kick off in October in Bangladesh and Mumbai.
Grameen Solutions is a technology company in the Grameen family of organizations, which includes the microlender Grameen Bank.
