Obviously not Bitcoin

Heard Rajiv Shah, president of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), on NPR this morning say that as the financial infrastructure was lacking in Afghanistan, it was non-trivial to pay people. So they had a couple of pilot programmes where people were "paid on their mobile phones". What do you think this entails? The lack of infrastructure that makes Western style payment possible, would also make a mobile phone solution difficult (you have to use something accessible via your phone, in order to get afghanis in your hand in some local place). Mike