Major technology provider to telecom operators Ericsson has thrown itself into the mobile financial service scene today by announcing Ericsson Money Services, a new offering that claims to let anyone transfer money to anyone else in the world easily. The money transfer will be “as simple as sending an SMS,” according to the company.

Banking on mobile money’s promising future, the Swedish vendor says it has been working on this business line that allows for mobile payments and person-to-person money transfers for the past two years in Europe and Asia. The target audience? Unbanked consumers with cell phones, and those living in developing and emerging markets. Indeed, the release states that mobile banking could help more than 1 billion unbanked consumers.

“A new market is opening up consisting of consumers whose first meeting with banks will take place over a mobile phone and who may never own a plastic card,” said Semir Mahjoub, Head of Ericsson Money Services, in a statement. “People who may never enter a bricks-and-mortar bank now have the opportunity to ‘walk’ into a virtual bank using their phone.”

Ericsson forecasts the world will have more than 50 billion connected devices by 2020, and wants a piece of that potentially very large pie. No doubt, that growing market exists, but many others have also picked up on the financial services and cell phone pairing potential, like Isis, a Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA venture – in partnership with Discover Financial Services and Barclays plc – that would use near-field communications (NFC) technology to allow for point-of-purchase payments through the mobile phone.