  This paper addresses the strategic challenges of deposit banks, and payment
clearinghouses, posed by the growing role of mobile operators as collectors and
payment agents for flows of cash for themselves and third parties. Through
analysis and data analysis from selected operators, it is shown that mobile
operators achieve as money flow handlers levels of efficiency,
profitability,and risk control comparable with deposit banks. Furthermore, the
payment infrastructures deployed by both are found to be quite similar, and are
analyzed in relation to financial profitability, strategic challenges and
opportunities. This paves the way to either mobile operators taking a bigger
role,or for banks to tie up such operators to them even more tightly,or for
alliances/mergers to take place,all these options being subject to regulatory
evolution which is analyzed as well . The consequences are mapped out in
operational and regulatory terms
