Doing business globally

There are many logistical challenges at very fundamental levels -- how to make monetary exchanges in remote areas, for example. Currency differences, access to mail or land-lines or ATM's or banks, communicating orders ... all of these fundamentals of business transactions needs to be in place. Christopher Rodrigues, chief executive of Visa International, believes they are manageable with a single device: the cell phone. It goes where land-lines and mail trucks don't and it allows transfer of all the information necessary to conduct business. Mr. Rodrigues used China to illustrate the growing importance of wi-fi transactions:

In the next four years, 100 million cell phones will be used in India. That number should reach 500 million in China within three years. "What we are seeing," said Rodrigues, "is a global shift from paper-based transactions to electronic payments." The benefits of electronic transactions include lowering transaction costs (by reducing the costs of handling cash and reconciling payments), moving economic activity from the informal to the official economy (by mainstreaming more individuals into the banking system) and improving financial transparency. Indeed, the World Bank has cited effective and efficient payment systems as vital elements for economic development in emerging countries.

Read the whole article about the conference on global business at which Mr. Rodrigues and others spoke.