Iran’s currency value fell last week, decreasing from 24,000 to 26,400 rials, in relation to the U.S. dollar. Unfortunately, few Iranians had this important information. Mobile phones, websites, and store-front displays all experienced some form of censorship. In the case of mobile phones, messages containing the word “dollar,” in either Farsi or English, were not delivered. On January 10 this year, similar censoring of phone messages occurred in coincidence with a decrease in the rial’s value.

If governments can so easily exert politically-motivated control over mobile phone systems, what does this mean for mobile banking and the mobile money movement?

For more on this story in Iran, read the Middle East Online’s article “SMS containing ‘dollar’ suppressed in Iran.”

Image Credit: Middle East Online

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