Flutterby™! : Cell phone payments

In a recent email exchange, Meuon mentioned that in many third world countries the cell phone is the preferred payment mechanism because cell phone providers are more trustworthy than banks.

The U.S. Military switched to paying the Afghan National Police with cell phone transfers rather than through the Afghanistan government hierarchy resulted in employees thinking they'd gotten a 30% raise because they were suddenly getting all the money they were due, rather than with a large portion being chiseled off by corruption and graft.