The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is making its largest grant to date in the financial services space -- $35 million to help set up a global network to help the poor gain access to savings accounts and other financial tools.

The grant announced today will create the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, a coalition of bankers and policy makers from developing countries, aiming to expand savings accounts, insurance and other financial services to people living on less than $2 a day.

The alliance is based in Bangkok and managed by the German development organization Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the recipient of the Gates grant.

The Gates Foundation has invested $350 million so far in financial services for the poor, a relatively new program for the world's largest private philanthropy. Gates started with a broad approach that included credit and insurance, but has narrowed it down in the last year to focus mainly on savings.

Microcredit, making very small loans to poor entrepreneurs, has captured the world's attention and billions of dollars in donations and investment.

Savings accounts are at least as important as credit, but efforts to expand savings are not being funded, says
Bob Christen, who directs the Gates Foundation's financial services initiative.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur -- among the poor are legions of maids, day laborers, factory workers and others who don't run their own businesses, he said.

The problem for many low income people is they have no safe place to put their money. Banks don't consider it cost effective to take the tiny amounts they are able to save. And many microfinance organizations that give out loans are not licensed to take deposits from the public.

The newly funded alliance will share information about innovative ways to help people save money, such as allowing retail stores, post offices and mobile phone networks to receive deposits and process bank transactions. "We believe virtually everyone could use a deposit account," Christen said.