NAIROBI, Kenya–A national audience got a view of how payments are being made in an unexpected place that is ahead of the U.S.: Kenya.
CBS’ 60 Minutes profiled the “M-PESA” service that is offered by the country’s largest cellphone provider, Safaricom, and which essentially allows payments via a text. The Cash can be uploaded to the account at numerous small retailers and requires, as was noted by Bob Collymore, the CEO of Safaricom, the cheapest of cellphones and was “designed to work at the lowest level of technology.
One female farmer interviewed during the program remarked, “It’s like having a bank in your pocket.”
There are 85,000 M-PESA agents across Kenya, creating what 60 Minutes called “a giant grid of human ATMs. One exchange during the report included this:
Collymore: This is bankless banking.
Stahl: You don't need all those branches.
Collymore: You don't need the branches.
Stahl: You don't need the ATMs, windows.
Bob Collymore: Absolutely not.
The service has grown rapidly in Kenya, according to Collymore, because government regulators resisted pressure from the country’s banking lobby.
“The most effective barrier for the success of mobile money around the world is the banking lobby,” Collymore told Stahl. “The banking lobby in most parts of the world is a very strong lobby. And banks have looked at what's happened in Kenya and have decided that they don't want to see that happening in their own countries.
Stahl: "Not in my backyard."
Collymore: Exactly. The banking regulators have been persuaded that this is a threat to the banking industry.”
Collymore said his company, which takes a small fee on every transaction, earns approximately $250-million annually from the M-PESA service.
Kenya’s credit unions, known as SACCOs, have also been active in mobile banking.
The full report can be found here.