One of the mobile phone features that has been offered in Europe and other countries that has never caught on in the U.S. is the ability to pay for things using your mobile. Reuters reports that the mobile money market for the poor will be worth $5 billion by 2012.

In developing countries the majority of people lack bank accounts, but most of the people do own cell phones. Most people on Africa for instance lack a bank account but there were 270 million mobile phones in the country in 2007.

New financial services are being rolled out in the country that will allow users to pay for things like food and taxi rides using their mobile phones. The banks in the country are backing the plan as a way to open a new conduit to customers who skip traditional bank accounts because of prohibitive fees. It’s not clear exactly how the service would work and how the users would get their money into the mobile account to begin with.

[via Reuters