Last week the World Bank published a new book titled “Protecting Mobile Money Against Financial Crimes: Global Policy Challenges and Solutions” which serves as a practical guideline for relevant industries and governments to regulate mobile money transfers.

Banking services on mobile phones for both domestic and international transfers in developing regions has become a huge industry. Companies and project such as Global GCASH and SmartMoney in the Philippines América Móvil in Mexico; Wizzit in South Africa; Celpay in Zambia/Tanzania/DRC; and Safaricom’s infamous M-Pesa in Kenya, have emerged with viable banking solutions for the world’s poor. According to GSMA, over 1 billion customers have access to a mobile phone but no access to formal financial services and over 80% of mobile banking services are taking place in developing markets.

However, the demand for guidance and technical assistance in creating a legal framework to make these transfers secure is equally profound. Regulatory regimes consistent with the international anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) in new mobile money phone financial services have remained vague.

Written by Pierre-Laurent Chatain, Andrew Zerzan, Wameek Noor, Najah Dannaoui and Louis de Koker, the book’s provides sensible guidance for jurisdictions and internal systems to draft regulations and guidelines in order to comply with the AML/CFT standards with the mobile money transfers. The guidelines are flexible enough for their mobile money to continue to grow.

In particular the paper aims to :

1. Assesses the new AML/CFT regulations and practices and their relation to mobile money;
2. Cultivate guidelines for drafting AML/CFT regulations that cover mobile money, and:
3. Provides examples of best practices within the industry to include AML/CFT in their own business models

This is a great resource for anyone in the mobile banking industry, or government agencies, who want to include the standardized measures of AML and CFT in their business models, or in their regulations, for customer’s transfers.