Peruvian President Ollanta Humala has passed a law that regulates the use of a new electronic currency system which is socially inclusive and facilitates access to financial services in remote rural areas.
With this new electronic cash initiative, people in remote parts of the country can make payments, money transfers and other operations through mobile phones.
Described as "a financial inclusion tool," the system will also allow the State to use electronic money to pay subsidized social programs like Pensión 65 and Juntos.
"There are beneficiaries of social programs who live in places where there is no Banco de la Nación or private commercial bank, and from time to time, they have to hop on a bus and travel like cattle to a district where they can receive their Pensión 65 or Juntos money," the president said at a press conference in the Government Palace on Wednesday.
Humala added that "this system was designed bearing in mind that 65 percent of rural districts do not have access to banking systems and services, while mobile phone coverage reaches 95.5 percent of the country's districts and there are 32 million mobile phone lines."
Luis Miguel Castilla, Minister of Economy and Finance; Carolina Trivelli, Minister of Social Inclusion and Development; and Daniel Schydlowsky, Superintendent of Banking, Insurance and Private Pension Fund Administrators of Peru, also attended the conference.
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