Posted on 03/17/2007 8:26:43 AM PDT by NewMediaJournal
We are on the cusp of a new era of terror financing, that of mobile payments or "m-payments." An m-payment system is being developed by members of the GSM Association to enable migrant workers and the poor who do not have bank accounts to transfer money internationally, efficiently and inexpensively. According to the World Bank, 175 million migrants transferred at least $230 billion international remittances in 2005. Are Hamas, al Qaeda, Hezbollah and their likes far behind?
Soon, every mobile-phone owner will be able to send money, pay bills and make purchases anywhere, anytime. According to the GSM Association, 3 billion people have mobile phones, but only 1 billion people worldwide have bank accounts. BearingPoint, a major management and technology consulting company, estimated the unbanked marketplace in the United States alone in 2006 at $510 billion. No wonder that banks such as Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, BancorpSouth, as well as mobile phone companies such as Cingular, Verizon, Sprint and Vodafone, to name a few, are clamoring for a piece of the action.
Without the implementation of a real-time digital anti-money-laundering compliance framework, the m-payment system is well suited to become the "killer application" for money laundering and terror financing. All you need is a stored value card and m-payments enabled mobile phone and carrier.
(Excerpt) Read more at newmediajournal.us ...
Alarmists can now say with conviction:"The sky is falling!"
Law enforcement can now see a new route for surveillance and G2 on bad guys.
This sword cuts both ways.
There's considerably more evidence in these transfers than the Arab system called "hawalas" which is strictly word of mouth.
Better sell your Western Usury stock!
Ye old operative motivating word here is "billions".
That kind of action just plain draws commensurate attention on a breathtaking scale.
You wish to sidetrack the train of thought with little logic dead-ends? Feel free.
Whatever. This could be a tremendous aid in eradicating the cabal that is running all of this. Or just making them even more circumspect. It's fun to conjure.
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