Systems and methods for providing a mobile telephony infrastructure for transferring electronic payments are provided. A user provides an amount of cash and a mobile telephone number to a distributor who then communicates to a payment processor the telephone number and the amount of cash provided. The payment processor then sends a payment code to the mobile telephone of the user. The user then can show the payment code to a merchant or other payment recipient to provide payment. A merchant can scan or otherwise receive the payment code from the user's mobile telephone, and transmit the code along with the amount of money to be received to the payment processor. The payment processor then credits the merchant's account with the appropriate amount of money, and transmits a new payment code to the user's mobile telephone reflecting the amount of money remaining after the payment to the merchant.