Mobile Money for Haiti: a contest
This is cool:
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is using its financial clout to push the Haitian marketplace toward change by offering $10 million in prizes to the first companies to help Haitians send and receive money with their cell phones…
The fund will offer cash awards to companies that initiate mobile financial services in Haiti. The first company to launch a mobile money service that meets certain criteria in the next six months will receive $2.5 million. The second operator to launch and reach these benchmarks within 12 months will receive $1.5 million. Another $6 million will be awarded as the first 5 million transactions take place, divided accordingly between those operators that contributed to the total number of transactions.
For more details, see the press release.