I was wandering around the Congo (Congo Brazzaville, for anybody knowing the difference) the other day and a few things caught my attention, the most compelling of which was the currency, which is the Central African Franc CCFA).

It trades at about CFA50 to R1, or about 2c for each CFA. There are quite a few notes in issue – from the much-crumpled CFA500 note (R10) to the CFA1 000, the CFA2 000, and so on. Many of the notes are very old and crumpled and many are clearly forged.

It is quite possible that very many are forged but this hardly stops them from circulating. The currency has stabilised to the point that it is hardly worthwhile forging the notes, given the cost of ink and paper and the possibility of jail. It is a very interesting matter, since whoever has a few CFAs and wants to buy something is effectively saying: “I have been given this in exchange for work or goods I sold and now I want to exchange it for similar [value].”

The French government has pegged the CFA to the euro at €1 = CFA655, which stops it sliding as far as, for example, the Zimbabwe dollar. The interest I have in this currency is that it is effectively of no significance.

It only has value in the hands of a person and, as I said, it matters not to forge it. I was thinking about this when I was standing in a queue at my bank. Depending on how you look at it, banks are wonderful or awful things. Very often, if anybody tries to criticise a bank in a newspaper article, the editor will redline it. Banks take out a lot of advertising, on which printed media relies. Oh, they would all “like to be your bank” and “how can we help you?” but, when you criticise them, it will be advertising “today, tomorrow, together . . . never”. They just pull the advert, which, uh, hurts. And then they make you queue in the bank. They make it hard for you to draw cash without giving notice and then they charge you for drawing the cash. They lace your account with charges for every last thing. In the old days, they made money by lending money at a higher interest rate than they paid to borrow it. Now they make it from charges and savings on staff – we queue because they do not want to pay for more staff. They grind us everywhere. They offer to lend money when you do not need it and then would not lend you money when you do need it.

And their call centres . . . must be the worst on the planet. So awful. None of this, however, affects the simple holder of CFAs. He or she proffers his or her currency as cash. Only accepts cash. Trades in cash. Thus, the question is not “Will the banks ever get better?” Instead, it is “What can replace the CFA as the trading currency for 50-million people in Central Africa?”. The answer is the cellphone. Not right now. Now it is open to fraud. But add a few features, like voice recognition, print recognition and a few more less obvious recognition items, and one gets a very reliable hand-held bank.

Want to buy goods? Transfer from your phone to the vendor’s. Anywhere. Oh, one can spring up and say, O! Do these people have cellphones? Can they afford them? Well, just about all of them do have cellphones right now. Not all of them smartphones but, guess what, smartphones are not required.

This will happen, I am sure as day follows night. The banks will say, who cares, let us now concentrate on the real business of financing governments and wind turbines and arms deals. We do not need the public. This is not so. They do need the public. The public is one huge cash cow. Workers have to be paid. If you can pay them without going through the banks, so much the better. No more fees. No more queues. As I stand in the endless queue . . . bring it on.