Stephen J. Gould once called humans "the primates who tell stories." Stories are part of how we transfer culture, they are a device through which we shape our identity and relationship to the world - in the development community, they are a way to get people to act. Stories help connect people emotionally to a cause far better than any mere statistic could, no matter how compelling.

Tell me that there are millions of micro-entrepreneurs without access to credit, and I might not bat an eye - tell me a good story about even one person who was able to lift themselves out of poverty through microfinance, and you've made a personal connection.

You've inspired me to care about your cause by making an abstract statistic real and visceral, now I can put a face to every person that is helped by microfinance. This is the type of connection that helped make microfinance a movement, as a lot of its popularity can be attributed to the stories that get told over and over in the media about microcredit beneficiaries and about the movement's own hero-figure, Muhammed Yunus.

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This weekend I had the chance to read CGAP’s new report about branchless banking. The report is a short summary about the current state of the branchless banking market. To those readers who do not know anything of the market it is an easy introduction. To those readers who have been following the sector in recent months, it offers a good peek into the future of what branchless banking may become and what it needs to get done.

The paper lists off seven key observations about the current state of the market, in addition to four uncertainties about how the market will develop and four predictions. In my opinion, most of the seven observations are already well-known. Still, these known knowns are nicely and succinctly explained. Many of these observations were brought up during my interview (see part 1 and part 2) with CGAP’s Mark Pickens.

In my opinion, the most important observation of all corrects the common misconception about poor unbanked people being offered this service. CGAP estimates that in fact less than 10% of branchless banking customers are poor and unbanked. However, CGAP also predicts that poor people will end up using mobile banking more than rich people in about three years, when the market matures and competition increases.

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