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One of the key selling points of Facebook's Libra project was that it would prove a boon the world's 1.7 billion-strong unbanked community. Over in Africa, however, the humble mobile phone has been fulfilling such a role for the past 20 years.

Over the past 10 years mobile-based lending has grown in Kenya, but there are concerns about the business model. The most prominent is the debt culture that has become a byproduct of mobile-based lending: borrowers fall into the trap of living on loans and accumulating bad debt.

Seven independent mobile payment systems in Europe have teamed up to form the European Mobile Payment Systems Association. Its mid-term goal is to make it possible for the companies' combined 25 million users to use all of the individual systems in each of the member countries.

The Revolut payment app plans to expand beyond Europe and Australia, where it built its primary markets, and into the USA, as well as Japan, Brazil, and Russia.

PayPal has become the first foreign company to acquire a payments licence in China, after buying a majority stake in a small Chinese online payments firm, Guofubao (NationPay).

According to the IMF's Financial Access Survey, while mobile money continues to grow in its epicenter in Africa, it's also taking off in Asia. The survey also provides a wealth of information on the access to and use of basic financial services, including breakdowns by gender.

Vodafone is no longer part of the Libra consortium. Vodafone will dedicate resources previously intended for Libra to its well-established and successful digital payment service M-Pesa, which the company plans to expand beyond the six African nations currently served.

As Stephen King said "sooner or later, everything old is new again!" In the 1990s Finland experimented with central bank digital currency in the form of its Avant stored-value card. It was never very popular and was discontinued in 2006.

GSMA Mobile Money and GSMA Intelligence have undertaken a study to assess the impact of mobile money on monetary and financial stability across several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, something which - to our knowledge - has not been done previously. To achieve this, we looked at trends in a number of monetary and financial outcomes, both in countries where mobile money adoption is widespread and where uptake has been limited.

Cross-border P2P payments and money transfers firm MoneyGram launched MoneyGram FastSend, a new service through which consumers can send money quickly and easily to their friends' mobile phone number via the MoneyGram website and mobile app.

The National Bank of Ethiopia will allow locally-owned non-financial institutions to start offering mobile money services as it seeks to boost non-cash payments in the country.

The Global System for Mobile Communications reported that the number of registered mobile money accounts surpassed one billion. It found that regulation that enables low-cost services for the financially excluded has been crucial to reaching that milestone. However, certain policy interventions, such as sector-specific taxation and data localization requirements, are putting pressure on the industry and may have long-term negative impacts on financial inclusion gains, innovation and achieving sustainable development goals.

The Bank of Uganda is encouraging banks and mobile network operators to further reduce fees on mobile money transactions and other digital payment charges to limit the use of cash and bank branch visits, increase daily transaction and wallet size limits for mobile money transactions, to make the cost of money for the business community and commercial banks low.

Government-to-person (G2P) payments have never been more important, as governments worldwide seek for ways to respond to the economic and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Eighty-four countries have reported changes to their social protection systems in response to the pandemic; fifty-eight countries of these are scaling up cash transfer schemes.

WorldRemit has announced a partnership with Alipay, enabling consumers to use the WorldRemit app or website for cross-border remittances to the Alipay app. The international money transfer service to the Alipay app is now available from over 40 countries.

The Central Bank of Kenya announced measures that will facilitate increased use of mobile money transactions instead of cash. While the immediate objective is to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19 by handling banknotes, this will also reduce the use of cash in the economy over the medium term. The current AML/CFT frameworks will continue to apply and CBK will closely monitor the implementation of these emergency measures.

Payments platform Square added a feature to their app to allow users to direct U.S. COVID-19 stimulus payments to their Cash App accounts. This is particularly useful for eligible recipients who do not usually file a tax return, who otherwise will not automatically receive the funds.

PayPal and Intuit QuickBooks were approved by the Small Business Administration to take part in the Paycheck Protection Program. The emergency government loans are meant to help small businesses survive the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

Treasury has released a new lender application for non-bank lenders such as Paypal PYPL and Square to increase the availability of loans. Here is a current list of FinTech companies that can also help you apply for these loans.

The State Bank of Vietnam is is urgently working with relevant ministries to finalise the pilot programme of utilising telephone subscription accounts to make small payments, or mobile money.