In many countries, mobile phones are used to provide mobile banking services, which may include the ability to transfer cash payments by secure SMS text message. Kenya's M-PESA mobile banking service, for example, allows customers of the mobile phone operator Safaricom to hold cash balances which are recorded on their SIM cards. Cash may be deposited or withdrawn from M-PESA accounts at Safaricom retail outlets located throughout the country, and may be transferred electronically from person to person as well as used to pay bills to companies.
Branchless banking has also been successful in South Africa and Philippines. A pilot project in Bali was launched in 2011 by the International Finance Corporation and an Indonesian bank Bank Mandiri.[41]
Another application of mobile banking technology is Zidisha, a US-based nonprofit microlending platform that allows residents of developing countries to raise small business loans from web users worldwide. Zidisha uses mobile banking for loan disbursements and repayments, transferring funds from lenders in the United States to the borrowers in rural Africa using the internet and mobile phones.[42]
Mobile payments were first trialled in Finland in 1998 when two Coca-Cola vending machines in Espoo were enabled to work with SMS payments. Eventually, the idea spread and in 1999 the Philippines launched the first commercial mobile payments systems, on the mobile operators Globe and Smart.
Some mobile phone can make mobile payments via direct mobile billing schemes or through contactless payments if the phone and point of sale support near field communication (NFC).[43] This requires the co-operation of manufacturers, network operators and retail merchants to enable contactless payments through NFC-equipped mobile phones.[44][45][46]
Tracking and privacy
See also: Mobile phone tracking
Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. While the phone is turned on, the geographical location of a mobile phone can be determined easily (whether it is being used or not), using a technique known as multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone.[47][48]
The movements of a mobile phone user can be tracked by their service provider and, if desired, by law enforcement agencies and their government. Both the SIM card and the handset can be tracked.[49]
China has proposed using this technology to track commuting patterns of Beijing city residents.[50] In the UK and US, law enforcement and intelligence services use mobiles to perform surveillance. They possess technology to activate the microphones in cell phones remotely in order to listen to conversations that take place near to the person who holds the phone.[51][52]
Health effects
Main article: Mobile phone radiation and health
Further information: Mobile phones on aircraft
The effect mobile phone radiation has on human health is the subject of recent interest and study, as a result of the enormous increase in mobile phone usage throughout the world. Mobile phones use electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range, which some believe may be harmful to human health. A large body of research exists, both epidemiological and experimental, in non-human animals and in humans, of which the majority shows no definite causative relationship between exposure to mobile phones and harmful biological effects in humans. This is often paraphrased simply as the balance of evidence showing no harm to humans from mobile phones, although a significant number of individual studies do suggest such a relationship, or are inconclusive. Other digital wireless systems, such as data communication networks, produce similar radiation.
On 31 May 2011, the World Health Organization confirmed that mobile phone use may represent a long-term health risk,[53][54] classifying mobile phone radiation as a "carcinogenic hazard" and "possibly carcinogenic to humans" after a team of scientists reviewed peer-review studies on cell phone safety.[55] One study of past cell phone use cited in the report showed a "40% increased risk for gliomas (brain cancer) in the highest category of heavy users (reported average: 30 minutes per day over a 10‐year period)."[56] This is a reversal from their prior position that cancer was unlikely to be caused by cellular phones or their base stations and that reviews had found no convincing evidence for other health effects.[54][57] Certain countries, including France, have warned against the use of cell phones especially by minors due to health risk uncertainties.[58] However, a study published 24 March 2012 in the British Medical Journal questioned these estimates, because the increase in brain cancers has not paralleled the increase in mobile phone use.[59]
At least some recent studies have found an association between cell phone use and certain kinds of brain and salivary gland tumors. Lennart Hardell and other authors of a 2009 meta-analysis of 11 studies from peer-reviewed journals concluded that cell phone usage for at least ten years “approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with a brain tumor on the same ('ipsilateral') side of the head as that preferred for cell phone use.”[60]
In addition, a mobile phone can spread infectious diseases by its frequent contact with hands. One study came to the result that pathogenic bacteria are present on approximately 40% of mobile phones belonging to patients in a hospital, and on approximately 20% of mobile phones belonging to hospital staff.[61]
A study on mice suggested that cell phone use during pregnancy may be likely to result in lasting mental health problems for offspring that resemble the effects of ADHD.