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A innovative effort to reestablish both phone and banking services in Haiti. See Gates Foundation, U.S. Government Back Cell Phone Banking for Haiti

Haitian cellular provider Digicel has received a $2.5 million grant for a project to allow people in the impoverished and earthquake-stricken country to use their mobile phones for banking.

Digicel is the first recipient from a $10 million fund set up by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the project is designed to speed up the arrival of cell phone banking in Haiti. The effort follows other mobile banking projects such as the M-PESA program in Kenya.