Mobile moolah

Om Malik reports another example of the convergence of "real" and "virtual" currencies:

Necessity, they say is the mother of invention. It couldn’t be more true in case of Africa, where pre-paid airtime is fast becoming the ‘virtual’ currency for Pan-African trade, overcoming conventional currency exchange and lack of banking infrastructure. It started out as phone users in Nigeria, especially in the rural areas trading minutes, but then the transactions took a mercantile trend.

Instead of paying cash, people started paying in airtime. Minutes became moolah and since the trend has caught on, and is being used for cross border trade as well.

Networked technology enables us to codify and transact information in a systematic way. It stands to reason that people will find more and more ways to tie the ephemeral values of that information to tangibly valuable things and services. And they don't need banks or governments to mediate the process (although the taxman is bound to take an interest soon enough!).