Money, Real Quick: The story of M-PESA

by Tonny K. Omwansa, Nicholas P. Sullivan

This book tells a tale of innovation, disruption, and transformation.Mobile money, e-money, e-float, e-wallets, mobile banking, however you characterize it, is not just a cool app. It’s a killer app, the first for mobile phones in the developing world. It’s also a disruptive innovation that threatens incumbent businesses and is sparking new business formation and entrepreneurship.Nowhere is this mobile money phenomenon more prevalent and successful than in Kenya. In five years, 19 million Kenyans, nearly 70% of the adult population, have signed up for mobile money services. Sixteen million are customers of M-PESA (‘M’ for Mobile and pesa means money in Swahili). Now, one out of every two people in the world who sends money over a mobile phone is a Kenyan. Mobile money is the rare case in which a poor African country is the global market leader and an exporter of innovation.Funded by The Rockefeller Foundation

Genres: Nonfiction, Africa, Economics

140 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Anthony Friscia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I happened to be doing fieldwork in Kenya during the rise of M-Pesa there. People could move around money using their cells phones for very tiny amounts; think Venmo, but done with SMS text, so could be done on the cheapest of candy bar phones. This was before Venmo was even big here in the US, so it was kind of amazing to see a villager, miles from the nearest town, pull out his little Nokia phone to accept payment for a goat. This little book is about how this came to be. It reads like it was written by Safaricom (the company that runs M-Pesa) because it’s all glowing and rah-rah. The technology has really changed things for the unbanked, and the book goes into that. I would have liked more on why it has mostly only caught on in Kenya (and not, say India) and about any problems that have arisen from it, as well as more about the technical aspects. It touches on these things, but very glibly. Interesting and quick read if you’re interested in the topic.

[Shashank · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief on the M -Pesa revolution. While dated, it is a sort of precursor to the UPI system in India that is all pervasive. Seeing that the future direction of finance and banking involves unbundling and reducing cash, M -PESA developed by Vodafone was truly revolutionary.

The book itself is around 30-40 pages too long. Some excrepts/ chapters were totally avoidable and I kept wondering if the author had a mandate to make it 140 pages + to get it printed.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant Insight into M-PESA

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

Money, Real Quick: The story of M-PESA (2012) by Tonny Omwansa and Nicholas Sullivan is, remarkably the only general book on M-PESA on Amazon. M-PESA is the electronic money standard used in Kenya and set up by Vodaphone for Safaricom.

M-PESA was set up initially as a method for repaying micro finance loans but took off and was adopted for other purposes quickly. It's been a big success in Kenya and in some other parts of Africa. It has enabled poor people to avoid the high cost of using cash. It's made it far easier to send money over a distance and it has helped many people obtain bank accounts as well. In Kenya there are 17M users which is about 2/3 of the adult population.

The book covers the story of M-PESA and has a lot of single person narrative tales about how M-PESA is used. It's definitely an interesting read about an interesting development in electronic and mobile payments.

[bankelele · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of M-Pesa, so far, as told by insiders, and people who's lives it has transformed.