any in the financial services industry estimate that there are as many as 50 million unbanked or underbanked people in the United States. Most are poor and have recently emigrated from another country. Some though, are simply distrustful of banking systems and the mainstream financial world in general.

The unbanked either exist completely outside the financial system or at most have some type of checking account but no savings account. The unbanked world represents the hottest topic, front and center to all of us," said Gary Craft, Founder and Consulting Services Director for San Francisco-based advisory and consulting firm Financial DNA. "The private sector will address the needs of [these people]."

Financial DNA recently held the Unbanked Financial Services Innovation 2005 conference at the Merchants Exchange Club in San Francisco's Financial District. The meeting brought together business leaders and technology experts from the rapidly growing prepaid card service, wireless and self-service fields.

The conference was divided into two tracks; one for publicly held companies and one for the privately owned. To comply with Securities and Exchange Commission regulations for publicly held companies, all the presentations for that track were Webcast live.

Much of the conference focused on remittances, which are monies earned by workers in one country and sent to family and friends in that worker's home country. Immigrant workers who send remittances make up a large portion of the unbanked market.

According to the event's opening speaker, Dr. Manuel Orozco, a Senior Fellow with Inter-American Dialogue, remittance payments sent out of the United States amount to roughly $200 billion. To provide the unbanked with financial services, many companies are adopting prepaid and self-service technology.

"The banking industry has been reluctant to deal with low income people, but there is also a cultural barrier and lack of trust between the unbanked and banks," Orozco said. He said many opportunities are available for card and technology companies to address this growing population.

A variety of organizations from the prepaid, money transfer and self-service industries presented at the event. Their goals are to bring remittances into the electronic payments world as inexpensively and securely as possible as opposed to sending large amounts of cash through the mail, which can be risky.

The conference also focused on payroll services for the unbanked. This included discussions of the increasing trend to issue employees debit cards loaded with funds instead of paper checks as well as add-on software for POS terminals designed to accept in-person bill payments. IPP of America Inc. specializes in walk-in bill payment and a variety of prepaid services including long-distance and wireless and debit cards. IPP works with ISOs to bring its product and service offerings to retail locations.

SVC Financial Services has a new prepaid product called Scoot Mobile Money, which is a cell phone with a reloadable debit card. Two or more people with this cell phone can transfer money using the wireless connection. SVC is currently working with several major wireless providers for this initiative; it is also considering partnering with ISOs.

For more information on these and other products as well as future Financial DNA conferences, visit www.financialdna.com .