The full suite of banking services that are accessible to you (sending money to any person in any country, buying shares, investing in funds, mortgages, insurance, etc.) are accessible to fewer people than you might think. Most people from Africa, Asia and South America don't have access to such services. Access to a deposit account provided by their local phone company is just starting to become widespread (eg. MPesa).
People in Africa and Asia actually have access to better and more ubiquitous direct payment mechanisms that I do here in western Europe. Those systems happen to run through telcos and the phone networks, but they work well and are available to billions of people. These technologies get the job done and show that there is no need for blockchain tech in this arena. Please try again.
Deposit accounts just cover a fraction of the financial services we regularly use in the developed world. They still lack retirement schemes, insurance and investment funds, etc. Blockchains (due to working in a trustless environment) could make these services possible in countries lacking the required settlement infrastructure and legal frameworks. The services provided by their telcos are also usually limited to a deposit account in the local currency. They don't provide access to international financial markets, ie. they can't invest in a retirement fund in London or buy Euros. And just like the internet allowed hackers to access information that their government censored, blockchains give people access to financial assets which their government could previously restrict.
If you're a plaintain farmer in Ethiopia and are already doing payments with your phone, blockchains are low on my list of missing links for participating in a well-diversified & feature-rich UK-based retirement plan software as a service.
