How “good enough” technology can stifle innovation

From Journalist’s Resource –

From The Conversation, written by Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Apple’s product launches are covered with breathless enthusiasm usually reserved for royal weddings and vaccines for dread diseases. The recent launch of the iPhone6 featured an exciting new technology — ApplePay — which, if widely adopted, will allow Apple’s discerning customers to make electronic payments from their phones in situations where they would have used credit cards or cash.

In other words, if all goes well, Americans will soon be able to do something that Kenyans have done every day for 10 years. M-PESA, the mobile payment system offered by Safaricom, is used by more than two thirds of adult Kenyans and is the model for hundreds of digital payment startups across Africa and around the globe.”

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Will Africa’s Mobile Money Revolution Take Hold?

From AFK Insider -

“When mobile network operator (MNO) Safaricom launched its M-Pesa mobile payments system in Kenya seven years ago, few business models were as ripe to explode. With extremely high mobile penetration rates, a high proportion of unbanked households, a regulatory system that allowed telecoms companies rather than banks to lead the way, and a migrant population suffering from expensive domestic remittances, it is little wonder that more than two-thirds of Kenyan adults use the service today.

In fact, M-Pesa has become the largest driver behind financial inclusion in Kenya. Today, 66.7% of the country’s residents have access to formal financial services, compared to just 41.3% in 2009. In addition, 43% of Kenya’s GDP passes through M-Pesa.

But the service, which has also been quite successful in Tanzania, is not just the continental leader in mobile payments. It can additionally boast of operations in non-African countries where its parent company, Vodafone, operates, including Afghanistan, India, and even EU-member Romania.”

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What Bitcoin Can Learn From Mobile Money's Journey

From Coin Desk -

“Many of the greatest challenges faced by bitcoin today – adoption, scale and regulation – mirror those of its predecessor: mobile money.

When launched in 2007, mobile money was just as foreign and raised as much alarm as bitcoin. Though it has since spread to 60 million active users, mobile money was not an overnight success. However, we now have seven years of data about its achievements and failures that we can learn from and use to shape the choices made by those in the bitcoin sphere.

Research on mobile money focuses on emerging markets, where use is concentrated and most people don’t have formal bank accounts. Digital finance has proliferated in these regions because it’s easier to roll out mobile networks than shore up information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure.


Kenya has become the paragon of mobile money. Today, more than two-thirds of Kenyans use M-Pesa.

Why did this work and what are the lingering issues and opportunities for bitcoin?’

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Why M-Pesa’s Kenya business model had to be altered for South Africa

From How We Made It In Africa

“It is frequently noted that business models that work in the US or European countries, might not work in Africa and should be adapted to the continent’s specific needs. The same can be said for adapting business models from one African country to another, as the ‘copy-and-paste’ method does not address different market dynamics. And there is no better example of this than the case of M-Pesa.”

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Kenya is pretty much the only place where mobile money works. Now, it seems, the banks want to wreck it.

From The Register

“Vodafone-owned mobe operator Safaricom runs M-Pesa, the poster child for mobile payments. It has revolutionised the lives of people who were so poor that the banks were not interested in serving them.

However, having become the dominant force in the Kenyan economy, the banks quickly moved with the regulators to ensure that the success of a non-bank organisation offering banking services was not replicated anywhere else.

Of course, this was dressed up with plenty of stick along the lines of “funding terrorism”, “money laundering” and “know your customer”, alongside carrots of “co-operation” and “responsibility”. The truth is that nowhere has been as successful with mobile payments as Kenya has, thanks to bank-inspired regulation hampering progress throughout the rest of the world.

Caught off-guard, Tim Murdoch, the architect of M-Pesa, told me: “It worked because they didn’t see us coming”. In truth, Vodafone didn’t see the exceptional success of M-Pesa coming either.”


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Forget Bitcoin: There’s A Better Model For Mobile Money

From ReadWrite

“It's called M-Pesa, and it's also spreading around the world.

Bitcoin has all the buzz right now. But there's another financial innovation that could have a far more meaningful impact on the lives of billion of people without bank accounts across the world.

In 2007, two years before the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the original proposal for Bitcoin, Safaricom, a Kenyan telecommunications company effectively controlled by Vodafone, launched M-Pesa, a service that let anyone with an active cell-phone line send and receive money instantly.

“Pesa” means money in Swahili, and M-Pesa, short for mobile money, has become synonymous with money in Kenya. M-Pesa transactions accounts for 40 percent of the gross domestic product. It has spread beyond Kenya’s borders to South Africa, Afghanistan, India, and most recently Romania. It doesn't require smartphones; it works on the very basic so-called “feature” phones that are common in the developing world. If you can send a text message, you can bank with M-Pesa. “

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