Nor does it include the cost of driving poor people (whose limited assets and irregular financial transactions make them particularly costly to service) out of the banking system.

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Last week, the Chase online banking system was down for three days due to a service outage.

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In the emerging world , the most famous mobile payments success is in Kenya, where M-Pesa , the P2P payments service of mobile phone supplier Safaricom, has effectively created an alternative banking and payments system.

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Japan, by contrast, needed to scrap its antiquated banking system, migrate half of its industrial work force into new-technology exploits and open up its service economy to the withering discipline of foreign competition.

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