More than 80 per cent of Kenyans are using e-payment products, new study by MasterCard has revealed
However, the report entitled A Progressive Approach to Financial Inclusion added that despite receiving much of their income electronically, most Kenyans still used cash for everyday transactions.
The report stated, “While Kenya has done a great job through innovation in enabling adoption of payments products like M-Pesa, payments products are
used for limited flows and have not significantly penetrated large dollar value flows.”
Created by mobile provider Safaricom in 2007, M-Pesa was originally designed for microfinance loan payments, allowing people to transfer money without cash to lower interest rates.
The technology was taken up faster in the East African nation than in any other country on the continent, resulting in the Economist calling Kenya a world leader in mobile banking.
Customers pay cash into the system through one of Safaricom’s outlets, which can then be transferred to another person via text message and picked up at another M-Pesa outlet.
Calestous Juma, director of the science, technology, and globalization department at Harvard told Tech Republic, said, “The idea of mobile banking was born in Kenya. Africans did not invent mobile phones, but they invented a new way of using mobile phones, which is for money transfer.”
