Mobile banking, powered by cellphones, is allowing people who could never afford traditional bank accounts to send, receive and save money, often just by writing text messages.

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Cheap and efficient m-banking services are cropping up from South Africa to Senegal.

They’re the latest example of how the cellphone has transformed life in sub-Saharan Africa, where over the past decade mass-market mobile networks have stitched together countries and families long separated by distance, poverty and shoddy infrastructure.

Less than one-fifth of Africans have bank accounts, and far fewer access the Internet.

The continent, however, recently surpassed the United States and Canada with 340 million cellphone users and is adding 70 million more each year, according to Wireless Intelligence, a market-research group.

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