The latest example of the expansion of e-cash in Africa is in Rwanda where the mobile payment platform MobiCash and financial institution KCB Bank has launched BioCash, a financial service that uses the national ID card as a bank account identifier.

This service uses an online biometric database with the TagPay platform to enable financial services for all Rwandans. Fingerprint-banking will allow for:

• all monetary transactions to be done just with the account owner's fingerprint without the need of cash or any card;
• the fingerprint reader recognizes the identity of a person and connects it to the correct bank account;
• all shops will be provided with fingerprint readers. At the point of sale, consumers only need to leave their fingerprint to pay, without entering a code or giving a signature.

The implementation of fingerprint-banking means that every Rwandan who is over 16 years old and has a national-ID could be included in the financial space and connect fingerprint to a virtual bank account.

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Because of the huge number of unbanked consumers, payment service providers in Africa are having to be very creative with e-cash and mobile payments. Large companies with operations in Africa, which can take advantage of the new services for collecting payments at the point of sale, could reduce their costs considerably.