M-Pesa launches mobile money in Kenya
- Date
- March 2007 (launched 2007)
- Category
- Economy & trade
- Region
- Kenya
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
In 2007 Kenya's largest mobile operator Safaricom, in partnership with Vodafone, launched M-Pesa, a mobile-phone-based money transfer service whose name combines 'M' for mobile with 'pesa', Swahili for money.
Using simple text-message menus that worked on basic handsets rather than smartphones, M-Pesa let users deposit, send and withdraw cash through a network of local agents, bringing financial services to millions who had never had a bank account. Adoption was extraordinarily fast: within a year it had around two million users, and within five years a large majority of Kenyan adults were using it, with annual transfers equivalent to a substantial share of national output. M-Pesa demonstrated how mobile technology could allow developing economies to leapfrog conventional banking infrastructure, and the model spread across Africa and beyond, helping spur a global mobile-money industry serving over a billion accounts. It became a landmark example of the digital revolution's reach into the Global South, advancing financial inclusion, small-business activity and everyday economic life far from the wealthy economies where the internet first took hold.
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Further reading
The wider story
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
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