Orange’s exit from banking, six years after a much-heralded entry, has been greeted as evidence that such diversification by telcos is doomed to failure, raising questions over how they can seek new revenues to achieve ROI on 5G infrastructure investments. But such oversimplistic analysis ignores stark regional differences that are partly culturally based, with telco banking operations actually booming in some developing countries. The fate of Orange’s banking division reflects the situation in developed countries, as well as some particular mistakes in its case associated with costs, and failure to meet earlier bullish predictions of customer gain. Before launching the banking service in 2017 Orange had conducted customer surveys suggesting that a quarter of its mobile customer base in France…