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Our cover this week examines
how smartphones and other digital technologies are disrupting banking. In Asia payment apps are a way of life for over 1bn users. In the West mobile banking is reaching critical mass—49% of Americans bank on their phones—and tech giants are muscling in. Change poses risks. Because the financial system is embedded in the economy, innovation tends to create turbulence, as when securitisation fed the subprime crisis. Yet the benefits of technological change are likely to be vast. If the world’s listed banks chopped expenses by a third, the saving would be worth $80 a year for every person on Earth. Rotten service will improve and the system will get better at its vital job of allocating capital to firms and consumers.
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 Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief
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Middle East and Africa
More from politics this week
