The problem is that many countries, especially the EU and US have strong anti-money laundering efforts in place (stronger after 2001). Not to mention the dracon

The problem is that many countries, especially the EU and US have strong anti-money laundering efforts in place (stronger after 2001). Not to mention the draconian banking laws in some places like Brazil and India. Further, the same people who don't have documents to get an account are going to lack the knowledge and access to use a digital service for banking. So, while this optimistic approach to digital banking sounds nice, it doesn't actually work well in practice. Of course, there is a lot of hope for new mobile money, like M-Pesa, but even with it the reality is fairly slow adoption rates. There's some good articles on the subject via Microfinance Gateway, could dig them up if anyone is interested.