Abstract
Financial inclusion is an important indicator for a country’s economy in general, however in the case of developing countries, financial inclusion levels are low and don’t seem to grow much with time. A concern has risen as to what can be done to increase these numbers in third world nations and the mobile telecommunications sector seems to have an alternative solution for this. Mobile banking is a term that has become popular in African and Latin American countries, but in order to fully understand its role in financial inclusion it’s important to distinguish between the different forms of mobile banking. Currently, we can identify two main kinds of mobile banking: additive and transformational models. Honduras is a developing country with low levels of financial inclusion, only about 20% of the population has a bank account registered to their name. Interestingly, mobile penetration has increased a lot in Honduras to the point where 86.87% of the population now owns a mobile phone and has access to a mobile network in their place of residence. This clearly shows an opportunity of using the existing mobile network to provide alternative banking solutions to the population as a way to increase financial inclusion. In this thesis, we analyze four different mobile banking cases that have been successfully implemented around the world and continue to make a detailed comparison in order to come up with a mobile banking service design that will help increase financial inclusion in Honduras.