And if they want to withdraw their gold deposit, they receive it back as a gold bar, and have to pay another 10% or so of its value to have it fashioned back into jewellery.

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Yet even in the months before its closing, the Southern Michigan branch meant more to Athens than just a place to deposit and withdraw money.

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Prominent examples include MoneyBox Africa and M-PESA, mobile-phone based money transfer services that allow customers to deposit and withdraw money, transfer money to others, pay bills and make purchases.

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M-PESA, launched in 2007, provides banking transactions without the need to visit a bank branch by using mobile phones and 19, 500 agents where customers can deposit and withdraw money, pay bills, purchase airtime and transfer money to other users and nonusers.

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Banking customers deposit money or withdraw cash at the grocery till, but everything else is handled by the call centres of the grocers' bank partners.

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In 2007, Safaricom launched M-Pesa (M for mobile and Pesa- a Swahili word for money) which lets users deposit, transfer and withdraw funds via text message.

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To deal with the potential problem that some farmers might get disillusioned and withdraw early - creating perturbation - each group will have to deposit enough money into a bank account in advance to cover the entire cost of a four-year operation.

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Meanwhile, the seller of bonds to the Fed can then withdraw some or all of that money, or leave it on deposit with the Fed.

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