M-Pesa has made financial inclusivity a reality after years of slow progress on other conventional platforms. Photo/FILE
The seven-year anniversary of M-Pesa has been trending on Twitter. The running theme has been something like ‘What M-Pesa has done’.
Safaricom is awarding the best tweets on the subject. Market Talk looks back and the verdict is: the money transfer service deserves plaudits for changing individual and business life.
M-Pesa has increased financial inclusivity in Kenya, with more than 15 million subscribers. Credit access has also increased thanks to M-Shwari, the savings and loaning service run jointly by Safaricom and CBA on M-Pesa.
There are also insurance covers that are leveraging on the service as the main means of payment. Apart from increasing financial access, it also increases quality of life in terms of helping people to buy goods and services faster.
A study by a food relief agency found that it was more efficient to send mobile cash rations as opposed to food rations to the hungry. The cash helps them to buy food and other essentials such as medicine.
M-Pesa brought a lot of convenience: people no longer have to queue in banking halls or travel to transact.
Time spent and distance travelled to access money has been collapsed to the minimum. Quantifying these savings in man-hours runs into billions of shillings. Accessing other utilities also became convenient.
For example, when your payTV subscription expires, you use M-Pesa in record time to be reconnected. Again, the fact that one does not need to move to pay reduces pollution linked to use of fuel.
This green benefit can be worth billions in carbon credits. Convenience also means less stress. As one of the M-Pesa adverts puts it, ‘Relax, you have M-Pesa’. Anywhere in the world you cannot have a serious discussion about mobile money and fail to mention M-Pesa.
It has been mentioned in TED talks, in World Bank papers and conferences, Harvard Business Review case studies on innovation and in stories about what tourists saw in Kenya.
M-Pesa success story has helped the world understand how mobile money works. It is also a tourist attraction on its own as the curious book travel to witness how it works.
There is also business and educational tourism as business experts visit Kenya on benchmarking studies and scholars visit to document this innovation and its impact.
All this has diversified Brand Kenya from the traditional athletics success and its prize wildlife.
Use of M-Pesa has also led to fewer bad debts as customers can pay bills from the comfort of their homes. There is no excuse of speed and queuing; it is about pushing a button. This is all thanks to ‘Lipa Na Mpesa’.
M-Pesa agency network has been a source of employment to thousands of people who now rely on the service to pay bills, school fees and rent.
Long live M-Pesa.
The writer is the marketing director of SBO Research. E-mail: [email protected], Twitter @bngahu.
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