Researched
Mobile Money (M-Pesa)
Kenya's M-Pesa (March 2007) lets people send and store money by text message on basic phones; mobile money now has 2.3 billion accounts and moved over $2 trillion in 2025.
Open in the interactive tree →Safaricom and Vodafone piloted M-Pesa from October 2005 with UK development funding and launched it commercially in March 2007; it needs no bank account, only a phone and a nearby agent. A 2016 study in Science by Tavneet Suri and William Jack estimated it lifted about 194,000 Kenyan households, 2% of the total, out of poverty, a finding other researchers dispute. GSMA counted 593 million accounts active within 30 days in 2025, but almost 75% of registered accounts are unused in a given month.
Prerequisites
- Money~600 BCPhone credit held by an agent network works as stored, spendable money.
- Mobile Networks (1G to 4G)1983Text messages over the phone network carry the transfers.
Sources
More in Society, Economy & Law · Digital Age
- Platform Economy1995-2009
- International Criminal Court1998-2002
- Social Media & Algorithmic Feeds2004-2012
- Disability Rights Convention2006