Introduction to Mobile Money in Developing Countries: Financial Inclusion and Financial Integrity Conference Special Issue

This special issue of the Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts contains papers contributed to a conference held at the University of Washington School of Law on April 20, 2012. The conference, entitled Mobile Money in Developing Countries: Financial Inclusion and Financial Integrity, was organized by the University of Washington School of Law with the support of the Linden Rhoads Dean’s Innovation Fund, Deakin University School of Law, Australia, and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). The conference provided an early opportunity to analyze the impact of the newly-released revised 2012 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations on mobile money. These Recommendations were published in February 2012, and represent the most recent version of global standards for national anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorist financing (CTF), and proliferation financing efforts. The conference focused on the trade-off between financial inclusion as a development strategy and financial integrity as a goal of prudential regulation and law enforcement, with specific reference to mobile money initiatives in developing countries and the new 2012 FATF standards. This introduction describes contributions from the conference speakers