M-PESA is a mobile payments system based on accounts held by a mobile operator and accessible from subscribers’ mobile phones. The conversion of cash into electronic value (and vice versa) happens at retail stores (or agents). All transactions are authorised and recorded in real-time using secure SMS.
In 2009, GSMA made a grant to Safaricom to support the development of a social transfer payment project via M-PESA.
M-PESA was developed by Vodafone and first deployed by its Kenyan affiliate Safaricom. In May 2012, there were over 15 million customers of M-PESA in Kenya.
Below are articles, blog posts and other resources that operators may find useful when researching this topic.
1. WHAT IS M-PESA?
Designing Mobile Money Transfer Services: Lessons from M-PESA
Author: GSMA
Here you’ll find ten key service features that have allowed the rapid uptake of M-PESA in Kenya. These include branding and messaging, ease of use, customer experience, agent monitoring, instant registration, free deposits, ability to send money to non-registered customers, and agent channel growth.
CGAP Video How M-PESA Works
Author: CGAP
This CGAP video explains In 3½ minutes how M-PESA reached 13 million Kenyans in just 3 years.
2. WHAT MADE M-PESA SUCCESSFUL?
Three Keys to M-PESA’s Success: Branding, Channel Management and Pricing
Author: Ignacio Mas and Amolo Ng’weno, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
How did M-PESA get so big? It defeated the scepticism, network effects and customer- agent interdependencies that affect all new payment systems. This account complements the earlier paper in Innovations by exploring branding, channel management and pricing in more detail.
Seeking Fertile Grounds for Mobile Money
Author: Ignacio Mas, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Amrik Hayer
The difficulty of replicating M-PESA’s success – even in neighbouring countries – suggests some may be more receptive to the idea of mobile money than others. This study tries to understand the variables affecting its popularity.
What makes a Successful Mobile Money Implementation? Learnings from M-PESA in Kenya and Tanzania
Author: Emil Sjöblom and Gunnar Camner, Valuable Bits and Caroline Pulver, FSD Kenya
This document provides an insight into the dynamics that influence the uptake of mobile banking, using the example of M-PESA’s success in Kenya and Tanzania.
3. HOW IS M-PESA REGULATED?
Regulating New Banking Models that Can Bring Financial Services to All
Author: Claire Alexandre, Ignacio Mas and Dan Radcliffe. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Thanks to advances in technology, banks can now delegate ‘last mile’ cash management and customer servicing functions to third-party retailers in towns and villages everywhere.
4. WHAT HAS BEEN THE IMPACT OF M-PESA?
Mobile Money: The Economics of M-PESA
Author: William Jack, Georgetown University and Tavneet Suri, MIT, 2009
This article discusses M-PESA’s adoption across households according to income, wealth, location, gender, and other socio‐economic characteristics, as well as the purposes for which the technology is used.
Community-Level Economic Effects of M-PESA in Kenya
Author: Megan Plyler, Sherri Haas, and Geetha Nagarajan. FSA, 2010
This study describes how M-PESA affects community members, both users and non-users of M-PESA, and identifies 11 economic effects after 2 ½ years of M-PESA’s use in these communities.
Notes From The Field: The Emerging Effects of M-PESA’s Rural Outreach at the Household Level
Author: Michael Ferguson, Microfinance Opportunities,2010
Until recently, M-PESA’s service has been mostly reserved for Kenya’s cities and towns meaning rural customers had to travel to use it. Now, with Safaricom reaching out to rural communities, that situation may change. Michael Ferguson looks at the implications of this trend in his Notes from the Field.
Cash In, Cash Out Kenya: The Role of M-PESA in the Lives of Low-Income People
Author: Guy Stuart & Monique Cohen
Using a Financial Diaries methodology, Microfinance Opportunities undertook a study to examine how low-income Kenyans use M-PESA, that country’s pioneering e-money service.
5. OTHER RESOURCES:
Visit Safaricom’s site to find M-PESA press releases, presentations and adverts.
Related BLOG POSTS
- Mobile Money for the Unbanked
M-Shwari: Mobile Money Savings & Loans
Safaricom and Commercial Bank of Africa launched M-Shwari last week, a credit and savings product for M-PESA customers. Customers can apply for a quick approval loan, open a bank account and move funds from the wallet over to an interest bearing bank account. ... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Safaricom M-PESA’s H1 FY13 Results: A portrait of a maturing mobile money service
Despite the emerging success of a number of mobile money deployments outside of Kenya, Safaricom’s M-PESA remains a bellwether for the industry. Safaricom’s half year 2012 - 2013 financial results released yesterday provide a window into the evolution of t... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
M-PESA, Airtel Money or Orange Money? This is why BoP customers choose one rather than the other
On the drivers of adoption in competitive markets This blog post was written by Tonny Omwansa, co-author of Money, Real Quick: The story of M-Pesa. The GSMA recently published the results from its Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey, documenting the degr... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
In Kenya, microfinance is going mobile - Part 2
This blog has been written with the support of Tonny Omwansa, co-author of Money, Real Quick: The story of M-Pesa. We want to thank David James, CEO of Musoni and Sharon Langevin, Project Director of FrontlineSMS: Credit. Read Part 1 here. FrontlineSMS ... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
In Kenya, microfinance is going mobile - Part 1
This blog has been written with the support of Tonny Omwansa, co-author of Money, Real Quick: The story of M-Pesa. We want to thank David James, CEO of Musoni and Sharon Langevin, Project Director of FrontlineSMS:Credit. Read Part 2 here. A lot has been w... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Insights on the Economics of Mobile Money: M-PESA Key Revenue Driver for Safaricom
This is a guest post written by Mireya Almazán and Megan Oxman, from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. M-PESA continues to make headlines, increasing revealing insights on the economics of mobile money. Recently released financial statements from Sa... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Money, Real Quick: The Story of M-PESA
Five years after its launch, the word “M-PESA” is routinely used as a verb in Kenya, so it’s only fitting that the service is now the subject of a book. ‘Money, Real Quick: The Story of M-PESA’ is a new book written by Tonny Omwansa and Nicholas Sull... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
M-PESA extends its reach
The following is a guest post by Billy Jack from Georgetown University’s Economics Department and Tavneet Suri from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. New data from the fourth round of a survey of Kenyan households confirm what every visitor to this East... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
M-PESA responds: Benefits and Challenges of using mobile money to reduce poverty for women in Kenya
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Over the past seven months, my colleague Dr. Jane Mutinda from Kenyatta University in Kenya and I have been studying how mobile money services impact poverty reduction in rural Eastern Kenya. So far we’ve seen that Safaricom’s mobile money service M-PESA h... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Why do mobile money agents get paid less than airtime retailers?
In most markets, if you compare the margin that retailers earn from selling prepaid airtime to the commissions that mobile money agents earn buying or selling e-money, you will find that the former is almost always higher than the latter. This makes recruiting... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Informal Pension Schemes powered by Mobile Money
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Risk-sharing effects of Mobile Money
Informal networks in developing countries provide an important means by which individuals and households share risk. However, this coverage is not always 100% comprehensive. Economists find that one of the reasons why this happens is transaction costs. Literal... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Financial inclusion: not just about bank accounts anymore
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Mobile Money Donations for Drought Victims in East Africa
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Ensuring Quality Customer Experiences at Agents Part 2
This is the second part of the video from MMU’s session on Quality Assurance at the agent Level. in this part, Jennifer Barassa, CEO of Top Image answers questions from the audience regarding the role Top Image plays in M-PESA’s distribution network. ... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Ensuring Quality Customer Experiences at Agents Part 1
In these two videos filmed during the last MMU working Group in Singapore, we explore the role that Top Image, a below-the-line field marketing agency, has played in developing and maintaining Safaricom’s successful M-PESA agent network. Top Image performs... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Safaricom – 56% Growth in M-PESA revenue
Last week, Safaricom announced its annual results. It has confirmed an increased turnover (+12.9% to Ksh. 94.83bn). However, after several years of sustained growth, Safaricom experienced a 12.4% drop in profits before tax due to increased competition. N... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
The adoption and impact of M-PESA: a first look at some new data
The following is a guest post we’re pleased to share by Billy Jack from Georgetown University’s Economics Department and Tavneet Suri from MIT’s Sloan School of Management The diffusion of M-PESA in the Kenyan economy has been rapid and deep. While ... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Mobile Money and the Demand for Banking
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Will Mobile Money Bring Microinsurance to the Poor?
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M-KESHO in Kenya
The following is a guest post we’re pleased to share by Ignacio Mas, Deputy Director in the Financial Services for the Poor program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. A financial inclusion holy alliance in Kenya: Equity Bank accounts riding on M-... - Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Learnings from M-PESA in Kenya and Tanzania
The mobile money community has watched (and compared) the adoption of M-PESA in Kenya and Tanzania with great interest. We're pleased this month to offer an article from Gunnar Camner and Emil Sjoblom from Valuable Bits, and Caroline Pulver from FSD Kenya, whi...
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